Lessons from 50 Years

Rather then get into extreme detail about my family-weekend, I would rather share with you the many wonderful things I have learned from my grandparents. They've been married for 50 stinkin' years so I think they know a thing or two about a thing or two.

First, a quick synopsis of the weekend:

Friday night we have steak dinner at my aunt & uncle's house.

Saturday we spent the day at the Minnesota State Fair.

(For those of you who aren't lucky enough to derive from the wonderful state of Minnesota, the state fair happens to be the longest running, largest and BEST state fair in the country. I'm not making it up.)

This included the Tim McGraw concert.

This morning, Sunday, we went golfing.

Now, my grandparents were not living in the US when I was born, although they were both born and raised here. In fact, they finally moved here from Germany 1994 when my Opa (grandpa in German) retired from his job as a teacher and principal of a military high-school (who I am sure some of you are familiar with, as it is still a fully-functioning Army/Air Force base today.) He held this job for 30 years, although 3 were spent on a base in Bermuda and 3 were spent on a base in Japan (where my aunt was born) before they settled in Germany.

My grandmother was a loving, supportive and dutiful wife, in many ways living the life of a military wife. She was lucky to move less often and never sent her husband to war, but the role was much the same.

For my 26 years of life, they have been my shining example of love, marriage and family. After many years, they still hug and kiss each other. Oma calls Opa "dad" when we're all together as a family.

My Oma is loud, high-strung, opinionated (wonder where I get it?) and a true matriarch. She sparkles in so many ways. She is also the most serving, generous and loving person you can find on this planet. She was a small-town, farm-kid; a cheerleader; a young bride; and a grandma at 43 (which she still tells the story that in order to solidify the fact that just because she was a young grandma did NOT mean she couldn't wear her leather pants of the plane to meet me!)

My Opa is quiet, reserved, charming and ridiculously smart. He is patient and kind; funny and equally generous. I am also fairly certain he would lay down in a road for any one in our family. He also grew up in a small town, but got a college degree, and then a Masters. He then spent 2 years in the Army Reserves; married my grandma (after being a teacher at her school for 5 years - but I swear no scandal was involved!) and accepted his position with DODDS.

They are very different, but together they make a good team.

On Friday, when I asked my grandmother what piece of advice she had for anyone thinking of getting married - or advice rather, for making a marriage work for 50 years, she replied with this:

(This is actually something she told me when I was 14 or so, but at the time I was too immature to really understand. Now that I am, and I am in a relationship with someone I want to marry, this advice has been my "romance-mantra".)

"It's about mutual respect. Some days, the butterflies won't be there, some days the sex will be awful, some days you might not even like that person very much. But if you respect who they are, what they stand for and how they live their life, all of those other things will fall into place. You have to look at him and respect him as a man, a husband, a father, a friend, a human being and if you do, you will be able to love him forever."

It's so simple and so true.

And when I looked at my grandpa and asked him what his advice was, after 50 long years of marriage, for any newly married couples out there, he looked at me with a smile and said:

"What she said."