Charlie and I flew down to Zihuatanejo, Mexico this past week to celebrate our 50th wedding anniversary.
We stayed at the posh Thompson/Hyatt Resort on Playa La Ropa, a tropical setting with oodles of palm trees, clear turquoise water, and a white sandy beach populated with chaise lounges under the shade of palapas. Nothing much to do except enjoy the scenery, have Margaritas and snacks, and read.
Muy bien!
Our room at the resort was very spiffy, as large as our first home in Valinda, overlooking a lagoon, and had our own private plunge pool. The bed was mammoth and sat right in the middle of the room, and the furnishings were very modern in style.
Perfecto!
We stayed for four nights. We ate at the HAO restaurant (on property) the first night, enjoying a Mexican barbeque. It was very nice.
On the second night, we went downtown to a very nice bar/restaurant called “Bandidos”. We had some grande Margaritas and I ordered Molcajete for dinner. It is a native dish that I always seek out in Mexican restaurants (but can never find in the States) and it was outstanding.
The next night, for our actual anniversary dinner, we ate at an upscale place called “La Gaviota”, which is located at the south end of Playa La Ropa. We enjoyed a great meal (I had a scrumptious seafood pasta), some Mariachi songs, and a wonderful sunset over the bay.
Magnifico!
As usual, our Mexican hosts were friendly and helpful. Charlie and I have been traveling to Mexico together for fifty years and, without exception, this has always been the case. People who we know who “would never go to Mexico” because of fear of the cartels, criminals, rapists, etc., don’t know what they are missing.
Those doofuses have been watching too much Fox News, I think!
The only bad things about this trip were: (a) the massive logjam on the 91 Freeway (a freeway-blocking accident involving a car and a semi) as we headed toward LAX; (b) the flight back to California on Alaska Airlines which took an extra 45 minutes due to a headwind; (c) a clusterfuck at the Alaska terminal which required us to sit out on the taxiway for 45 minutes before disembarking; and, (d) lots of confusion as to hooking up with our hotel shuttle at the chaotic Bradley terminal.
What a mess that place is! As enormous as LAX has become, and with all of the transportation infrastructure that has been improved there, it is still a nightmare figuring out how to get in and out of there without losing your mind. Too many people and cars. We’ve been to many countries, hence airports, and I think LAX is the worst. By contrast, the Zihuatanejo/Ixtapa airport in Mexico was wonderful: clean, modern, efficient, and friendly.
Run by a bunch of “lazy Mexicans”; who knew!!
We flew First Class on this special trip, and really enjoyed the extra legroom and service. However, we sat behind a large gentleman wearing a Covid mask who let out a horrible-sounding cough about every 60 seconds or so. It sounded like he had Tuberculosis, Ebola fever, or Stage 4 lung cancer, or some nasty communicable disease. We were simultaneously afraid and annoyed, thinking that he’d missed his Medevac flight to Scripps. However, his wife informed Charlie that the poor guy has a bad case of asthma: 100 percent not communicable. That was great news, but we still had to listen to the loud, honking cough for 3-3/4 hours.
Yipes!
Our celebratory getaway to Mexico was made possible by son Tim and wife Shanon, who watched our posse of three Boston Terriers in their Murrieta home for six nights.
It was a circus, I’m sure, but they seemed to have enjoyed the experience. As a matter of fact, Shanon wants some of that energy around her in the future, so she’s getting a Pug puppy in a few months.
On our six-hour drive back to Mesquite from So Cal, Charlie and I reminisced for hours about the circumstances that led to our hookup in 1973 and marriage in 1974.
I was a single guy at the time, while she was a recent divorcee with four young sons, working double shifts at the hospital to make the mortgage payment, and getting zero dollars in alimony or child support from her ex-husband. If it weren’t for my G.I. bill assistance (I was finishing up college at Cal State L.A.) and Food Stamps that Charlie got from the County, we would have never made it.
Most people we’ve met are astonished that a single guy would have taken on a divorcee with four young kids. To be honest, I really never gave it much thought. I could tell that Charlie was a good person with a huge heart. I had dated (after high school when I was a lifeguard/swim instructor, in my college fraternity days, and during my four-year military stint) probably four dozen different gals, some of whom were shopping for a husband. I enjoyed every one of them. However, my priority was finishing up college, not chasing skirts. It just so happened that I ran into Charlie in 1973 when I was working at Queen of the Valley Hospital (as she was), and I was immediately “moonstruck” by her caring and warm, friendly nature.
“Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!”
And, so, we began our Great Adventure… which turned out fantastic.
I don’t think our successful marriage by chance. We both came from large, loving families anchored by honorable, hard-working parents. My parents and her parents both enjoyed 50-year marriages. This doesn’t happen by accident, as the marital endeavor is a team sport: mutual support, encouragement, agreement on the important things (finances, child-rearing, career aspirations, problem-solving, etc.), and lots of caring through thick and thin.
My wonderful wife and I have had our emotional ups and downs, financial stress, medical issues (mostly Charlie, who’s had jillions of them!), career hurdles, parenting challenges, and plenty of arguments. Fifty years is a long time to hang with anyone, certainly. However, we have been great TEAMMATES, working together to achieve our goals. And, always FRIENDS.
The two of us are very different people, some might say polar opposites.
Charlie is a people-person who is always looking to help others. She is dyslexic, to a degree, thus a slow learner. However, once she gets up to speed, watch out… because she becomes an expert, is diligent, and works extremely hard at whatever task is at hand. She has been a bookkeeper for decades and her clients love her, as she is available to them 24/7/365. She is, in essence, a business nurse… with a huge heart. She can walk into a room of 200 strangers and, upon leaving, has two-dozen new friends and perhaps a few new clients.
I am an introvert, by nature, and in that same room of 200 strangers one might find me up against a wall, nursing a drink, observing people and behaviors, but not going out of my way to make new friends. I’m not unfriendly; however, I simply don’t need a lot of friends to function. Maybe it’s “guy thing”? Or, maybe it’s just me? Another difference between us is that I’m constantly reading and trying to learn, and that stuff comes easily to me. I can read 100 pages per hour, and I put time in every day scouring scores of news sources to keep up with events and issues. I had a long, productive career in a corporate structure where I enjoyed tackling complex problems, nurturing my subordinates, and achieving goals.
So, how did “oil” and “water” mix so well?
I think we both understood the concepts of love and marriage, and tried as hard as we could to always be friends. We make decisions as a couple; very rarely does one of us do something significant without buy-in from the other.
For example, we both enjoy interior design, and have worked hard to create nice living environments in the several homes that we’ve owned. If, for example, we want to purchase a new rug or painting or couch, we will jointly examine the options until we both say, “That’s it!” What I do is go online to something like Wayfair, check out all of the possibilities, identify some promising candidates, and then sit down with Charlie and go over each one, eliminating the “losers” one by one until we both agree on the “winner”. That’s the way we make sure that each item is exactly what we want… and there are no hard feelings afterwards.
We work collaboratively on all significant decisions. It’s probably a normal behavior for people who are married for a long time, and probably abnormal for couples who struggle and end up divorced.
Anyway, we did it our way and we’re elated with the result. We were serious about marriage, and the commitment that it entails, and we made it work.
As the saying goes, “There is no “I” in team”.
I am reminded of a Panama Canal cruise that we took years ago. We played Bingo every day. On the first day of the cruise, the Bingo host asked the several hundred married folks (pretty much everyone) in the showroom to stand up. Then, he said, “Everyone who has been married less than five years… sit down.” And, a number of the couples did so. He then repeated his message but made the criteria ten years. More couples sat down. This went on for awhile until he eventually arrived at the final couple, who I think had been married something like 75 years!! They got a well-deserved “hooray” from the crowd.
We actually came to know the couple, as they played bingo every day on the 10-day cruise. The guy’s name was Tony Rine (I can’t remember his wife’s name) and the two of them just so happened to be neighbors of my parents in Vista, California. A very nice couple, they were. And, frugal. While everyone else in the game was buying multiple tickets for every game, Tony and his wife would buy one ticket only, and they would jointly mark the numbers on the card as they came up. The odds of them winning were many times 300 to 1, because the other contestants were playing multiple cards.
During that 10-day cruise, the Rines won a Bingo worth several hundred dollars several times, playing the one card. It was amazing. On the final night, when the jackpot Bingo game was worth $12,000, Tony and his bride of 75 years played their usual one Bingo card. We were sitting with them, playing multiple cards, when Tony yelled, “Bingo!” We could hardly believe it.
Now, that’s what I call teamwork!