50 years married? That's love. Real love.

We celebrated my parents' 50th wedding anniversary this weekend with family and friends.  Fifty years?  Wow.

Think about it.  Fifty years ago, there were about 3 billion people in the world.  Today, there are more than 7 billion (and my parents only contributed me, my sister and five grandchildren ... slackers).  Fifty years ago, the average cost of a house was $13,000, the average cost of a new car was $2,500 and a gallon of gas was 31 cents.  Today, people build treehouses for $13,000.

Truth is ... you don't last 50 years without being in love ... real love.  Not the Nora Ephron romantic comedy love. Or the Hallmark, tearjerker commercial love. It's the "I've seen you at your best, your worst, your highest, your lowest" kind of love -- and it's beautiful.

Bill and Gerry -- 50 years

Bill and Gerry went to Snyder High School together in Jersey City back in the 1950s.  Dad spent time in the Air Force, traveling to exotic places like Mt. Hebo, Oregon, before having a career at AT&T Bell Labs.  And, Mom served as an executive secretary at a shipping company in Harborside in downtown Jersey City. And after being a stay-at home mom, later in life she was an office manager for a chiropractor and a secretary at St. Peter's College (read about her tales of wisdom in this earlier blog).  

They shared their vows at St. Paul’s Church on May 8, 1965, just a few miles from where we had their party on Saturday.  They have lived in the same Greenville neighborhood their whole lives. First on Danforth Avenue, then two blocks over to Terhune Ave. Then another block over to McAdoo Avenue.  They are not world travelers ... not millionaires ... not quoted in The Sunday New York Times.  But, after 50 years, they know a thing or two about love ... real love.

It's the Love, Real Love...

Their love has grown over 50 years and shown itself in all the little ways.  It's the love that allows you to keep quiet -- and still smile -- when your wife tells you the same story for the hundredth time in 50 years about the time the Pepsi truck lost its parking brake and demolished your car on Fowler Avenue.  It's the love that allows you to keep reading your book when your husband snores so loud in his chair that it could wake the dead -- but he insists he's not tired or ready to go to bed.

It’s the love that perseveres through struggles -- losing your parents and loved ones -- and holds you up through tough days of sickness and surgery.  It's the love that sees you through depressing times and life's unexpected changes.  Love that makes your partner provide the encouragement and nudge that you may need to get back on track.

It's the love that laughs and celebrates with you -- all the births, christenings, birthday parties, graduations, weddings, etc. Your permanent date.  Your other half.  The one who has built a lifetime of precious memories with you.

It’s the love that builds communities.  Nights working the food tent at the Our Lady of Mercy Carnival, cooking sausage and peppers and coming home smelling like grease, so the school could have a little more money.  Calling bingo games in the smoke-filled Maria room, so the kids' school could have a little more money.  Shoveling the snow, picking up a newspaper, sharing flowers or stopping for a chat together with your elderly neighbors on McAdoo Avenue.

It's the love that builds friendships over dinners at Just Sonny’s or Laico's.  Playing Trivial Pursuit with friends in the kitchen to all hours.  And barbecues – oh so many barbecues in that small yard on McAdoo Ave.

It’s the love that builds families.  From the old days in Brick and Toms River, or Norristown and Clifton, building memories for your kids with their aunts, uncles, and grandparents.  It's making the 10-hour drive the last few years to vacation in the Outer Banks of North Carolina so you could build even more memories, now for your grandkids with their aunts, uncles and cousins -- and, of course, Nana and Pop.

We tease them a lot because it's fun, but our family's respect, love and admiration runs deeper than they will ever know.  Love... real love ... isn't found in a Hollywood film or a Huffington post sob story.  On many days, it's found in a two-family home in Jersey City in the hearts and lives of Bill and Gerry.