Addendum to the Post Below

I've been doing some thinking, and maybe I'm being a little too harsh on my parents for living together in a passion-free zone. I'm young, and I can believe that I've got some very puerile ideas of what constitutes a worthwhile relationship. You remember those old commercials for Disney World, where this post-middle age couple just comes home from their Disney vacation and their neighbors question how much fun the couple could have had there: "You went to Disney World without the kids? That must've sucked," the neighbors ask. (I'm paraphrasing here.) And the couple replies something like, "No, Disney World was awesome, the kids suck!" Point is, I guess I'm kind of conditioned to believe that life should be full of that exuberant zestfulness Disney epitomizes.

Fact is, much as I complain about Dad, how he spends more time on his exercise bike than he does with his family, that he drives — and Mom in particular — nuts with his obsessive rule-making, that his idea of a romantic evening is listening to an Irish folk singer in an Irish pub, that he never acquiesces to what Mom wants to do on the weekends, how he tells Mom and me what to wear even though he has no fashion sense, that he... okay, I'll stop now. Mom, too, spends most of her "free" time doing chores instead of riding the whirling teacup ride. But the fact remains that they've been doing it for thirty-three years, because they wouldn't be able to raise a family together otherwise. Just for that, there's got to be some sort of love in their relationship. After all, I'm surprised (and I think my grandma's secretly disappointed) that they haven't gotten divorced... but I guess they want to keep their lives headed in the same direction together. And to that, I say, happy anniversary, Mom and Dad.

Still, if I ever get married, there's gonna be some damn passion in the relationship!