What is the secret to a long, happy marriage?

DISCLAIMER #1:  Having been married just shy of 20 years...(and not very happily for most of those), I am clearly no expert on marriage. However, it is near the top of my WISH LIST....I want to get a second chance. I want to have the opportunity to do it right! So, I have taken advantage of this visit to my parent's summer cottage in Northern Michigan to interview my mom on her 52 year marriage to my father, to see what I can learn about this mystery called marriage.
DISCLAIMER #2: The photos inside the cottage were taken of framed photographs and they did not turn out as well as I would have liked, but I'm including them anyway!

In the cottage, on the wall of my parent's cozy little bedroom are a series of informal framed 8X10 photos of my parents over the years. They have been coming to this little stretch of beach in a small resort town called Charlevoix for the past 48 years. This wall chronicles those years and their love affair--as well as the fashions and the process of aging. What I see when I look at the wall are two people in love. I don't see parents. I don't see a dancer and a rabbi. Though they are all of those things and many more. But the wall has always showed me my parents as a couple in love and that was something that looked effortless and magical and as necessary as air.

"What does it take," I asked my mother, "to have a happy marriage for all these years?"
Without a second's hesitation, she responded with one word: "MAZEL."

For those of you who don't know, mazel means luck. Yikes, I am trying to find out what one can do to have a happy marriage and she is telling me it is out of my hands. I give her a frustrated look and she backtracks. "OK, maybe not just luck, after all, there are elements of choice too. One has to marry someone who is kind, affectionate and smart." But then she takes a breath and corrects herself. "Well, I had to teach daddy to be affectionate; he didn't see mommy and daddy holding hands--like I did. So, I tried to see how he would respond to my affection and playfulness. Once, I wrote "JOAN LOVES SAM" in the snow on his car and waited to see how he reacted. Would he leave it and smile when he looked at it? Wipe it off immediately? Get annoyed?" "What did he do?" I interjected.  He left it there, and I knew we could be playful together."

She went on to tell me about another time that, as a young rabbi, he was holding court at a dinner party and she felt sort of forgotten. They were engaged at the time, and she remembers saying to him as they left the party, "I'm not going to live like this. When we are somewhere together, I need to feel that we're connected." 

"Was dad angry that you were critical of him?" "No, he said: 'You're absolutely right," and he never did that again."

When I asked mom what the one non-negotiable trait was that dad possessed, she said "intellectual curiosity." "I still get all excited when he points out some article in the New York Times and wants me to read it so that we can discuss it!"

We also talked about the fact that she brings lightness and laughter to his life and inches him away from his serious, workaholic ways. I have always noticed the way they laugh at the same jokes; they both have sharp and quick senses of humor--surely that must have come in handy as they traversed these 52 years.

Two days ago, mom celebrated her 75th birthday. We started out at a NIA exercise class, then she got her hair done, then she went to a lecture by a visiting composer, then we went to dinner, then to ice cream and then --much to my chagrin--ended up at the local Indian-run casino for a few minutes of gambling and trying not to get asphyxiated by the smoke. Dad, like me, hates the casino, but he graciously agreed to accompany my mom and I and her brother and sister-in-law because we all knew it was what mom wanted. He chose not to tell us that he was not feeling well, that he was unsteady on his feet and that it had been getting progressively more difficult to find his balance all evening. By the next afternoon, we were taking him to the hospital by ambulance so that he could be checked out. 

I am VERY happy to report that he seems to be getting better and steadier each day; hopefully, this will just be a small easily forgotten blip on their radar screen, but it was memorable for me.

 I witnessed my father put my mother's needs (even something as silly as a quickie 20 buck gambling session on her birthday) above his own fears and concerns. Sometimes in a great marriage, you take one for the team. You remember that the needs of your beloved may need to come ahead of your own. Sometimes, you gamble and hope you'll get lucky!