From One Generation to the Next: A Happy Marriage’s Timeless Lesson
By Andy Doctoroff
I asked Stacy to marry me on bended knee — trembling under a ripe, orange moon, within earshot of waves gently lapping the Lake Michigan shoreline, just beyond the base of the Mission Point lighthouse.
Stacy’s decision to say yes has been life’s greatest fortune.
My taking vows on the bimah was, at the age of 33, my first truly independent act — so tightly tied to Mom’s apron strings, so far along the professional path blazed by Dad, so overly solicitous of my parents’ affirmation, was I.
“Why do you want Stacy to be your wife?” the rabbi asked before the wedding ceremony.
“Because she is loving, gentle, and good,” I answered, summoning Cosette’s lyrical portrait of her father, Jean Valjean.
“But are you sure?” Mom asked one prior day when we were house hunting. She had inched toward a line she dared not cross while unmistakably questioning Stacy’s ambitions.
“Yes, Mom, I am,” I answered — with uncharacteristic resolve.
* * *
We lost Mom to the ravages of cancer a full generation ago, when Stacy’s and my marriage was young. On June 8, Stacy and I will celebrate our 25th anniversary.
The passage of time proves a son can both honor the memory of his parents, on the one hand, and challenge their ways and mores, on the other.
A recurring fantasy of mine is to visit with Mom, to walk with her arm-in-arm, to welcome her into our hearth and home, to revel in the affections she and her grandchildren would have felt for each other.
I beseech reassessment. Mom, do you now see what I see, what I have always seen? Do you see you that your vision of a meaningful life, a well-led life, may have been too narrow?
* * *
The list of all of the wonderful things Stacy is and has become during our marriage could fill a Torah-sized scroll.
Stacy is the benevolent ruler of our happy little realm, the maestro who has conducted our five-person symphony.
This remarkable woman: the best of active listeners whose first instinct is to smile; whose spoken words are freighted with meaning; whose eyes lock yours in conversation; who instinctively registers every emotional tic of our three children; who saw when Matthew’s sneakers had become worn, when Nicole hadn’t eaten enough fruit, when the whiteness of Alana’s lips presaged stomach flu; who is rightly viewed as my better half, the selfless, street smart, more sensible half; who cares not a whit about the baubles, bangles, or bric-a-brac that money buys; whose insights allow me to be a better father; whose spine is made of titanium; whose existence deepens the happiness of those she touches.
* * *
Today, my most immediate memories of Mom are the four of us — her little boys — bobbing and rocking atop a sea of her love. How Mom would overcome us. In my mind’s eye, I am pinned on the couch, her long, thin fingers gripping and framing my face; she feigns hyperventilation, machine gunning kisses and I-love-yous. Wriggling, I resist but then submit to bathe in the frothy depths of her affection.
Twenty-two years after her last breath, memories of her cause my eyes to shine with tears and sighs to catch in in my throat.
* * *
Reading glasses perched on the tip her aquiline nose, garbed in her red, velour house robe, Mom devoured the New York Times, her cherished companion. Because of her intellectual curiosity, Mom asked us to rate everything on a scale of one to ten. Stacks of psychology books teetered on her nightstand. A pioneer who left (but always returned) home in the early-1970s to earn her Ph.D., nothing seduced Mom like the mind.
If asked, Mom wouldn’t have disputed that the witty, Ashkenazi intellectual, the purveyor of ideas whose words snap, crackle, and pop, represents the pinnacle of human evolution.
Never did I dare disclose to Mom Stacy’s inability during our courtship to (gasp!) place with precision the Great Depression on a 20th Century timeline.
* * *
Stacy rues that dates, jargon, and crosswordese sometimes do not settle into the firmament of her memory but instead skitter across her mindscape like tumbleweed and then blow away.
But just like Mom, ironically, Stacy has cultivated a thriving clinical therapy practice that calls on her to minister to the needs of the psychologically distressed.
Opinions differ as to whether I am Stacy’s most time-consuming client. On most nights, she rubs my back because she knows the caress of her fingers soothes and helps me fall asleep. She is my load-bearing wall. We have now loved each other for so long that I wonder whether I could live contentedly without her.
* * *
Dad grew to truly appreciate Stacy by the time he died of Lou Gehrig’s Disease in 2002. During his final months, she succored him, a widower, and captured his heart.
But Mom, too enfeebled and disfigured to explore new perspectives, never was able to hold Stacy in the tightest of embraces.
Stacy’s and my silver anniversary nears, and I am once more lost in reverie. Mom escorts me on a wooded stroll. I again ask: Do you now see what I see, what I have always seen?
Mom — the best of mothers, a mother who scrutinized and changed her ways, who unconditionally loved her boys — nods and says, yes.
She is proud of her son when I single out the most important lesson my marriage has taught me: A child must chart his or her own course; parents — all of us — are myopic at times . . . fallible.
Mom smiles. She sees more clearly the futures of her three grandchildren — beneficiaries of this lesson. Theirs are more confident futures of independence and lives fully-lived.
