Good things happen while you're waiting

The Boston Globe

Beverly Beckham

I still have it, tucked in an old scrapbook, a small, year-at-a-glance-paper calendar, which, for six, long months, was taped to my bedroom mirror. I remember looking at the calendar, every morning, from July 1, 1967 to January 20, 196, carefully, religiously, the days then coloring in the square of that day. No simple check marks for me. No giant X's. Just Crayola pastels, the colors of fairy tales, marking the passage of time.

The song in my head back then was the Beach Boys "Wouldn't it be nice if we could wake up in the morning when the day is new?” I was so eager to begin married life that I didn't give much thought to the life I was leaving.

I was 20, then. I had a mother, a father, a second-hand car my father bought when I was a freshman in college, a car he was still paying for as I was dreaming about being a bride. I was the first in the family to go to college, but I lived at home. He didn’t want me driving with anyone so he bought me a car he said was “safe.” I had never been away from home not ever. Not even for summer camp.

What must my mother have thought when she looked at that calendar? When she saw the eagerness and expectation in all those squares?

In my mind I see her, not face-on, but in the mirror, behind me, smiling. I see the stuffed animals on my bed, my old record player in the foreground, the stack of 45s next to it, sweaters and skirts everywhere, and me, as I was then, little more than a child.

This is the gift of time - that you can look backward and see.

I see now how young I was. I believed in fairy tale endings and was positive that when the last square on the calendar was filled in with I walked down the aisle, life would go on just as it was except that I would be a Mrs. waking up in a different house, eating breakfast at a different table, studying in a different chair, but that's all. Nothing else would change. Not the music I listened to. Not my friends. Not my clothes. Not my beliefs. Not my mother and father. Not the world.

I never once imagined 40 years later. Forty years was outer space, as far in the future as silent movies and the Great Depression were in the past. There was only today and next week and next year.

But here it is now my 40th wedding anniversary.

Benchmarks make you pause.

When we were married 25 years, my husband and I renewed our vows. They felt more solemn than the first time we said them. "In sickness and in health, until death do us part" weightier, no long an "if" but a "when."

The first time our parents sat misty-eyed in the pews behind us. The first time we smiled for the cameras. The first time was before losses, and sorrows, and disappointments.

When I was young, I believed I would always be young. I believed that I could die at any moment, but that I would never be old.

"You're not old," my grown-up kids insist. "Sixty is the new 50."

Perhaps. But there's no denying that 40 years married is a long, long time.

Katherine, my neighbor across the street, insists that it is not. She calls us newlyweds. "Wait until you're married almost 60 years."

I hope that we will be married 60 years. But I'm in no hurry to get there. Because I know that so many good things happen while you're wishing away time.

While I was waiting to be married, I had my mother beside me. While I was waiting for my husband to come home, I had his parents and my parents nearby. While I was waiting for a child to be born, I had that child within me and all to myself.

And so it is with waiting for wedding anniversaries, even when you're not watching the calendar, even when you long ago stopped coloring in the days.

Glorify the quiet streetlight

The Boston Globe

February 25, 2007