Traditional marriage? Mine? Who can say?
If my wife isn’t smarter than I am, she’s at least my equal in that category. Is that “traditional?” This lady with whom I’ve shared almost 35 years of bed and babies and all the other trappings of traditional family life finished college in three years with nearly straight A’s. It took me four years and, I confess, my record is a bit less lustrous.
If Maureen had stayed in the business world, there’s no doubt we’d now possess far more hard assets than we do. In the first two years of our marriage, she worked in the Loop for a national insurance company whose relocation to the suburbs was delayed. The company hoped her determination to have healthy, happy babies would not mean she’d desert it. Only after she gave her final notice did Chicago lose the company to Oak Brook. A great professional future lay before her. But she had more important things to do.
She selflessly ignored the prattling of those who scorned her choice of motherhood over modernity. She had babies to raise and magazine articles about the business world’s supermoms to disdain.
When P.J. broke his collarbone, when Nora left several layers of facial skin on the pavement up the block, when Meg decoded silent “e” long before her peers, Maureen was there. (OK, she missed Bridget’s theatrical debut in “Peter Rabbit,” a lapse so anomalous that, 12 years later, she is still teased about that single act of faithlessness.)
The six Geraghtys always knew there was someone in the world to whom they mattered more than meetings, more than annual reports, more than life itself. They had no new day-care providers to meet each semester, no revolving cast of caregivers. These kids had a human anchor in their lives whose very permanence assured them that they were supremely important.
Our brand of marriage seems to have worked. P.J. and Bridget were National Merit finalists; Joe and Nora were “commended.” All six rarely met an honor roll or dean’s list they were not on.
In whatever extracurricular activities they chose, they always rose to top leadership. Each one earned significant merit-based money to pay for college. With only one daughter to go, all have earned undergraduate degrees in four years with no debt.
Every Geraghty child has a specific friendship with each of the other five. Fifteen years ago, 4-year-old Bridget cowered at the top of our staircase when her 18-year-old brother was downstairs, a hulking, unfamiliar presence newly returned from his freshman year in college. Today she and P.J. talk on the phone, instant message each other regularly, and share many things, including their love of P.J.’s three daughters. One valuable legacy we’ve given each of our children is a set of siblings unmatched in terms of intelligence and talent and love for each other.
The three oldest are happily married, and the two mothers (Ann and P.J.’s wife, Diana, are registered nurses) are basically at home with their children. I can’t be sure–they live in six different states–but I believe that each of the six is a practicing Catholic. Emulation is the highest compliment your kids can pay you.
Kids learn everything they know (and think they know) from their experiences with Mommy and Daddy. If society is to produce generations of people willing and able to turn out even more generations, our kids must absorb the most important life lesson of all: how a man and a woman who love each other treat each other. We need them to learn that lesson. More important, they deserve to be taught it.
In the debate over gay marriage, our brand of marriage exemplifies another benefit of traditionalism. Like kids everywhere, the six Geraghtys needed both a mom and a dad, a woman and a man.
In the face of childhood injury, regardless of severity, Maureen is a card-carrying member of the Oh-You-Poor-Baby Club. My approach runs more toward “Don’t worry, the bleeding should stop before dawn.” Each of us brought something to our children’s lives that a less, well, diverse set of parents would have lacked.
In every respect (except raw speed!) she is a more cautious driver than I. She’d never draw to an inside straight. I’ll take the odd flier on a hunch. She packs winter and summer clothes for Phoenix in August, “just in case.” I carry an extra pair of slacks and a toothbrush in a backpack. She can shop for Communion dresses. I taught all six to throw a baseball. She always remembers that stripes and checks don’t match.
Though different in many ways, we bring something to each other that has enriched my life in ways I never imagined as a callow string bean of a suitor almost 40 years ago. We really do laugh at each other’s jokes and share knowing glances at the improbabilities and idiocies of the world we visit together. We fare very well while apart; together we thrive. At least I do.
It’s a rare political debate that I won’t enter with relish; her hand on my arm has probably brought more peace to our lives than I deserve. Still, she once faced down a churl who, a couple of years earlier, had made a vicious and unfounded accusation on national radio about me. The first words out of her mouth reproached him for his savagery. The cavewoman in her, always at the ready in defense of her children, was there for me too. Maureen and I decided early that our own lives were mainly about the example we would set for our children. We celebrated Sunday mass as a family. We stayed here in racially integrated south Evanston when many of our conservative and, especially, liberal neighbors were fleeing to (“finding better investments in”) north Evanston, Wilmette and beyond.
Dinnertime was family time, with unfettered discussion on every subject by everyone.
The only requirement, unspoken but unbroken, was no hatefulness. No racial slurs, no “faggot” or “queer” (even though the latter is newly fashionable, I hate it). Take any position you want, defend it vigorously. But hurt no one.
Ask a fish whether he prefers swimming in water or elsewhere, he’ll puzzle over the alternative. Maureen and I didn’t invent our family style, we’re just here.
If people call us traditional, I can live with that. And I can hope that others will find some value for themselves in the choices we’ve made.
