Spending My Inheritance

This is my Dad's favourite time of the year.

You see, my mom - his wife for lo these 57-plus years - turned 80 last week. Dad, however, is just a spry young 79. For five weeks, anyway, until he turns 80 himself.

It's during these five weeks every year when he can tease the hell out of Mom, and it's the only time when he can get away with calling her an old broad and we kids just roll our eyes skyward. It is their way, and has been for the duration of their marriage.

Fifty-seven years is a helluva long time to be together and I've often wondered if this happened because their lives got too comfortable to change, or because they truly love each other so deeply we can never really understand it. Perhaps they stuck together for the sake of the children. A united front, the better to say no when we ask for money, something like that.

I think it's all that, and more.

They've done so much together in those years. They raised three great kids (if I may say so) together; spent summers building a cottage together (after travelling the continent first) and they've planned their retirement together. They paid the bills together (we kids made ourselves scarce during those sessions) and they did a bunch of other stuff together, too.

Mom and Dad always had separate lives as well. Dad travelled all the time on business during my childhood. I wish he was around more, but he was there to teach me how to ride a bike and he was there to look the principal in the eye and tell him his son doesn't lie. "If he said it wasn't his beer on school property, it wasn't his beer."

Thanks Dad. (And it wasn't.)

Mom had her things. She had her exercise classes with the neighbourhood ladies (how she could find women in our small community shorter than her is one of the great mysteries of life); she had her upholstery classes; she had her garden. She had her boys.

I think they, like every successful couple, needed that separate peace. It made them stronger together.

Now, what they like to do together (as Dad likes to remind me) is spend my inheritance. They're off on a cruise as we speak, with Brazil and Rio's famous Copacabana beach next on their itinerary.

And Carnival.We can't forget Carnival. Go easy on the locals, Mom. And keep Dad out of trouble. He's still a young man in need of guidance.