The 50 year knot!

It’s hard to believe that Evelyne and I tied the knot half a century ago today. I guess heartfelt congratulations are “de rigueur” especially when we did it in my hometown back in France! 

In retrospective it doesn’t seem like a long time ago, but the sense of duration also falls victim of inflation, especially as we reach an advanced stage in life. 

At that moment, I didn’t have a clear path in my mind as to how my life would unfold, except that the next day, in lieu of a honeymoon, we both would be driving to Nevers, smack in the middle of France, where I had been promoted to a brand new job at Look bindings. 

So instead of a well-defined plan, we were thrown into another adventure in the unknown! This said, Evelyne was instrumental in grounding me and giving me a healthy dose of common sense that, over these many years, helped me cement the kind of judgment that would serve me so well. So, here we are 50 years later. 

Beside our sheer longevity, what would make our union last, while many often dissolved over time? It’s hard to make a hard list, so perhaps it’s the quiet accumulation of grace, those many moments when one chooses patience over pride, kindness over correctness, and presence over distraction. 

It’s not just shared joys, but weathered storms, the ability to forgive without forgetting, and to grow without growing apart. Resilience in a marriage isn’t built on grand gestures, but on the daily decision to keep showing up, to keep listening, and to keep loving—even when love looks less like fireworks and more like doing domestic chores together in silence. 

After fifty years, I’ve come to believe that what lasts isn’t perfection—it’s commitment, curiosity, and the gentle art of staying interested in each other’s unfolding story. It’s also a melding of views about about life, the world, neighbors friends and family, but not so tight that there isn’t any breathing and wiggle room left between the two… 

Happy Anniversary to both of us!