Okay, I admit we did just that. Marry young, I mean. I was all of 20, and Nina was a cradle-robbed 18 years old.
No, she wasn't pregnant -- despite what a friend of my future mother-in-law reportedly assumed, out-loud. It just seemed to us the right next step, and we were eager (boy were we!) to get on with our independence and adulthood.
In our defense -- it's not like we'd just met and decided a few weeks later to make the jump. We met as lab partners in high school biology class, and had been going together for two years. I had two years of college under my belt; Nina had finished her freshman year. So we were already -- as individuals -- working towards our future lives, and finishing college was non-negotiable for each of us.
Not to mention, we were so-o-o-o mature!
"Right...." I'm betting some said behind our backs.
But not Keith -- an admissions official at the college -- who told a friend of mine when asked if he'd heard of our engagement, "Yes, and I think they'll make it." I know he wasn't aware I was standing close enough nearby to hear, and I'm equally sure that I hadn't a clue at the time why he believed this. I just know that those were words I grabbed hold of.
My parents were aghast and feared for our marital future -- and probably our sanity. Nina's parents had married just as young, and so were supportive (though probably not jumping for joy).
Funny, though -- this romantic tale of a young couple bucking the odds to stake their future together while still in college took a pivotal turn in a very unromantic place: the school's financial aid department. We were still just toying with the idea of getting married, and had no idea what this would mean to us financially. How would we pay for school? Would we need to get jobs? We had a lot of questions.
So we visited the gruff-looking, crew-cutted boss of the department. I secretly feared he'd shoo us away perfunctorily, telling us to come to our senses and not take such a risk on our futures.
Instead, as we sat across his desk (near a framed fake dollar bill with his buzzed likeness and an "In Bill We Trust" inscription), he happily explained that as a married couple we'd be financially independent. Meaning, of course, that we could get low-interest loans and would qualify for substantial outright grants to help finance our educations. Maybe Bill worked on commission -- he seemed so pleased to lay it all out for us -- but I remember leaving his office amazed. "We can do this!" And thus we shifted from curiously wondering to eagerly planning.
I report all this because in today's light, our story is strange for two reasons. First, I'd guess that marrying so young is a lot less common than it was then. Second, our nearly 33 years of marriage puts us way out on the lunatic fringe of married people. Marrying that young and lasting so long -- we're a two-headed riddle standing in contrast to current norms.
Some might say we got lucky. Married student housing at the college, affectionately known as "Ball & Chain," was a mushroom-infested string of hand-me-down army barracks on the edge of campus. We instead ended up in a clean, new apartment in one of the small "theme dorm" buildings nearby, for a very affordable $85 a month (including utilities!).
The college community -- having a cloistered feeling it described as "living behind the Pinecone Curtain" -- was nurturing and safe. We attended 50-cent movie night (sometimes scrounging in drawers for the change), had friends over for dinner (despite our first disaster, a colander full of spaghetti noodles that slithered straight into a sink of dirty dishwater), and also had the support of several faculty members. These were our first mentors, including us in their grown-up lives, inviting us to spend time with their families (even if it was occasionally to babysit their kids), and generally giving us an impression that we belonged in their adult world. Occasionally they challenged us, too -- my advisor told me he worried I was too interested in getting on with the trappings of married life and wouldn't be prepared to make the educational sacrifices you really only have time and energy for in the absence of a mortgage, kids, and car payments.
I'm pretty sure I approached those college years with the belief that if we could just get through school and find jobs, that life from then on would simply be a long, smooth glide through adulthood. What a bill of goods! Life has definitely been good, but it's hardly been travelled at a glide, or downhill. Sometimes, yes (thank you God!) -- but at other times, it's been uphill, with unmarked intersections and hidden potholes.
The most difficult time came in Year Seven -- when we finally did have a baby, a mortgage, and a car payment. That's a year I would carefully steer clear of, if it ever were to reappear! After months of mounting confusion, stress, fights, and finally marriage counseling, we learned that our lives had changed dramatically -- but our way of communicating and relating to each other (from the Pinecone Curtain days) had not. It took some hard work to learn new ways to love each other in ways that gave us each what we needed in our new roles as "real" adults. I'd guess that each of the major changes in our lives has taken us through these "personal growth" grinders. Thankfully, though, none seem to have been quite as severe as that one.
Last week, as Nina informed me that a pair of classmates from college who married shortly after graduation were now divorcing after 30 years of marriage, she said, "Maybe we should start spending more time together, so this doesn't happen to us!" How true -- and still how strange -- to live in the same house, sleep in the same bed, raise the same kids together, and yet feel like we have to work at finding time just to "be" together.
It's a dangerous business, this married life. Hardly anybody we know from our college days is still married, and we see couples both young and not-so-young falling to the sidelines way too often. How much of our getting this far has been due to luck, or hard work, or grace? I don't know -- I'm sure there's a good measure of each. I'm still keeping a firm hold on Keith's words -- I think we'll make it -- and I have to say that the best part about marrying young, is knowing that the girl I grew up with is also the one I get to grow old with.
