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AnniversaryDecember 20, 2005 My parents were married on this date in 1947. No celebrations are planned: my mother died almost 10 years ago, and the marriage was a shell long before that. When their 25th rolled around, my paternal grandmother threw them a big party. The prospect appalled me. What was there to celebrate? How could the partygoers meet each other's eyes and find nice things to say that weren't evasive at best? I was a junior in college, it was final exam week; I pleaded finals and arrived a couple of days too late, even though my last exam was on the 18th. Needless to say, I didn't escape the marriage that easily. Till I was well into my thirties my parents were continually duking it out in my head: my father's ruthless perfectionism squelching my mother's every timorous move to put one foot in front of the other. Senior year of high school I encountered Eugene O'Neill's A Long Day's Journey into Night -- did I see the movie first and then read the play, or was it the other way around? I hear Mary Tyrone picking out a tune on the piano with stiff fingers, remembering hazily how the nuns had told her she had the talent to be a concert pianist -- but she had thrown it all over to marry James Tyrone, an actor. When drunk, which was often, my mother liked to remind us that she had done summer stock; she could have gone on in the theater if she hadn't married our father and "had you kids." You ungrateful kids who never lift a finger to help and think your father is always right. My mother, Mary Tyrone. If they gave up their dreams in order to get married, they also got married in order to give up their dreams. My all-purpose advice to just about everybody, starting with myself: Don't give yourself an excuse to give up.
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