42

The answer to "Life, the Universe, and everything"

My youngest son loves Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I remember in middle school when we gave teacher gifts after signing his name, he would write 42. The funniest part is the incredible number of teachers who had no idea what he was referencing.

When asked why he chose 42 for the answer Adams responded:

The answer to this is very simple. It was a joke. It had to be a number, an ordinary, smallish number, and I chose that one. Binary representations, base thirteen, Tibetan monks are all complete nonsense. I sat at my desk, stared into the garden and thought '42 will do' I typed it out. End of story.

The truth is that 42 does represent many things to many different people. Some find biblical meanings, some find scientific meaning, some find apocalyptic meaning.

In our home, other than my son’s sense of humor, it is now the number of years the husband and I have been married.

And no we can’t believe it either.

We have no idea how that even happened. We remember our wedding day, well sort of in that bride and groom whirlwind kind of way, and then the next few years while we were still in law school, but then everything seems to mush together once the boys were born.

And no, everything was not always a bed of roses. Life has had its ups and downs. Autism diagnoses, burying all our parents, cancer, heart issues, professional disappointment and now non-retirement retirement looms.

You would think that I would have some insightful vision to be able to pass on to future generations. Something to tell others how we did it. How did we stay together when there were so many trials and travails?

Well, I don’t have any great font of wisdom. Except for the following:

Your marriage must be something you both cherish. It has to be something you both want to last. It has to be something you do not take for granted.

You also need to remember that simply because you are mad at some point at each other that doesn’t mean it’s all over. Believe me if there aren’t times that you would like to “kill” each other, there is also something not so right in your relationship. While you create 1 person by your joining, you also are still 2 separate people with different identities which need to be respected.

Respect is another answer to the question of marital longevity. You marry for love, or lust (maybe a little of both). But in the end you need to ask yourself do you respect this person, and do you want to be associated with this person for the rest of your life?

Do they have the same values and follow the same ideals that you do? Do they have the same ethos? That doesn’t mean you will agree on every aspect of life, this is why the ability to compromise is also at the very heart of marriage.

In truth, the husband and I very rarely agree on much. We don’t like the same music, films, or books. We can’t agree on cultural norms. He thinks politics is stupid, while I thrive in discussing political ins and outs. I take religion more seriously than he does (well in a historical this is why we do this kind of way, not a Hashem is going to smite me if I don’t follow a rule perspective), but at the same extent, he is truly alarmed by the level of antisemitism in the world, and how easy it was for people to fall back on this evil.

In fact, one of the things my MIL (z’l) had said to us after we were married, is we need to figure out what kind of Jews we wanted to be. I had never really thought of that. We were both Jewish. End of story. But hubby was raised very reform and I was raised conservadox. He had a Christmas tree in his home growing up, while growing up in the deep south, I still brought a matzah lunch to school for all 8 days of Passover. Yes, we came to an understanding and created the kind of home we wanted. No, I did not win and neither did he. We compromised.

We do remark every once in awhile though, how amazed we are that we ever got married, and stayed married, truly.

In the end, though, the question comes down to do you want to share your life with this person and then you need to ask why? What is it that draws you together? And you also need to ask yourselves how can we make this work?

Now of course, I am also not talking about a marriage that has abuse, neglect, or any form of violence or malfeasance involved. I am talking about 2 regular people who come together and decide that they want to try to make a go of spending the rest of their lives together.

By the way, there is a theory out in the world created by people who have too much time on their hands, that we are not meant for 1 monogamous relationship, but are meant to have many in our lifetime. That when the idea of 1 marriage per lifetime came about it was at a time when 35 was considered elderly, and half of women died in childbirth.

They postulate that humans are not meant to spend their lives with 1 person and 1 person only. That if the average generation is measured in 20 year increments then we can expect to have the equivalent of a new partner for every 20 years of life.

To me it sounds like someone just wanted an excuse to cheat on their marriage without having to feel shame, failure or be held to censure.

I think they also forgot that at some point they will no longer be 35, 40 or nubile. Eventually you will reach the stage where you have a big belly, a receding hairline, and can’t drink milk any longer without making everyone around you wear a gas mask. These sociologists forget that at this stage if you haven’t been with a partner for quite awhile, no one is going to want you unless you have millions in the bank to offer them as way of enticement for putting up with your old person gross shit. (And believe me when I tell you, the older I get the grosser it gets.)

So this is where we are at. 42 years of compromise, arguments, figuring out neurodevelopmental issues, burying parents, fighting cancer and heart disease, dealing with financial collapse, having to basically rebuild from scratch.

What I also do know is that after 42 years, we are most certainly each other’s best friend, entering the twilight years wondering what is going to be around the bend, and hoping that we might yet get another 42 years to figure the rest of it all out.

Pictured our Ketubah- Jewish wedding contract.