Last month, my parents celebrated their 69th Wedding Anniversary. They are both in their nineties and live independently in their own home. My mother was a dancer when she was younger, and she’s still lithe and agile. My dad said she runs up the stairs like a gazelle. My father remains sharp as a tack, but he’s no longer an ace tennis player. Likewise, his basketball dunking days are long gone, much to his chagrin.
My parents met as grad students at UCLA. They were in completely different academic programs but had one overlapping class. My mother is outgoing and gregarious. My father is more reserved. They are pretty much complete opposites. My dad took notice of the cute petite brunette and decided to engineer a “coincidental meeting.” He exited the classroom via one set of doors and circled back to the other doors, so my mom would casually bump into him as she left the room. The manufactured “meet cute” worked, and she agreed to go out with the tall handsome athlete.
The first time he cooked dinner for her, he prepared his specialty…liver and onions. Yuck. The first time she played tennis with him, she beat him. To be fair, that was the first time my father had ever played the sport. And that was the one and only time she ever beat him. My dad had played collegiate basketball as an undergrad, and he played to win. With such an ignominious start to their relationship, you’d think it would have been doomed from the outset. But they married in December of 1955 and have been together ever since, living proof of the maxim “opposites attract.”
