Today is the anniversary of our parents’ marriage, which famously took place 5 weeks after they met.
In my mother’s telling, they were two sparkling souls with just enough shading to project the illusion of maturity. My father, at 37, was old for the time but medical school, war and its aftermath covered that nicely. Having been a liberator of Dachau and decorated for saving sick and broken survivors, he had the allure of reluctant hero. My mother, at 25, had had a failed marriage, but was chastened by it, pursuing a Ph.D. at night while teaching by day and being courted by other “eligible”s, validating her status as a good catch, despite the marital failure.
I later realized my mother’s storytelling was greatly influenced by characters she’d seen in 30s comedies--think Hepburn/Grant in Bringing up Baby--the brilliant, socially bumbling expert meets beautiful, independent, madcap gal. They clash. Sparks fly. But, in the end, find each other irresistible and realize their destiny together. “In the end” for my parents was 5 weeks, after which they eloped to Hyde Park, birthplace of their mutual hero, Roosevelt, and emerged deliriously happy, utterly deluded about the person they’d married and blind to the future.