58 years

I am writing this today, Tuesday, 27 January, our 58th wedding anniversary, for publication on Friday, 30 January. Eight years earlier, at our golden anniversary, I gave what was probably the shortest speech of the evening:

“I met my happily married wife, Mila, in a CPA review class in 1965. I met a lady who looked like Sophia Loren, and it was love at first handshake. She was a diligent student, and I was a diligent suitor. She got her CPA certificate. I got something better, a marriage certificate. And we lived happily ever after.”

Fifty-eight years later, I have learned that “ever after” is not one shining moment. It is thousands of ordinary days, steadily stitched together by love.

Our marriage has outlasted careers, outlived many friendships, and deepened with time. The country changed its fashions, music, politics, and even street names, yet at the center of that changing world, we remained at the same dinner table, still talking, still exchanging glances, still reaching for each other’s hands without thinking.

Our life was never built on wow moments. It grew from small, repeated acts of love that became habits, and those habits became our shared life.

Like many young couples, we once thought love was a feeling strong enough to carry us through anything. Years after our last dance at the Nile on Dewey (now Roxas) Boulevard, we learned that marriage is more than a feeling. It is a discipline, a daily decision to stay together, to listen, to forgive and to laugh even when life is not amusing.

We began with dreams larger than our means, in a small house and a smaller budget, but with great faith in each other. We argued over trivial things, then learned how to share space, pride and responsibility. The blessing was not in avoiding disagreements, but in ending them quickly, gently, and returning to each other with grace.

Then three children arrived, and the house grew louder, messier, fuller and happier.

Romance never left. It simply lived beside responsibility. As we climbed corporate ladders in multinational firms, our days filled with meetings, deadlines, cocktail parties and official functions. Before we knew it, our three babies were adults and eventually our “barkada.”

We cherished simple rituals of morning coffee, TV Mass, nightly rosaries, evening walks, the same seats at the table and the same way of saying goodnight. These routines quietly held our decades together.

In time, the children built lives of their own, and the house grew quiet again. Once more, it was just the two of us, like in the beginning, only gentler and more certain.

Our conversations shifted from tuition and other school fees, and report cards to travels, memories, dinners with children and grandchildren, and plans for Christmas reunions with the Lazo and Lacson clans.

After our corporate years, we spent three decades in business, she in exports, I in shipping. She often traveled abroad, sadly during our wedding anniversaries and Valentine’s Day, to meet her buyers, while I busied myself visiting the ports where my ships called. Even distance became part of our story.

We have walked through illness, disappointment, celebrations, grief, success and many unexpected blessings. We have attended countless weddings, baptisms and funerals, reminders that life is fragile and time is precious.

Our marriage of 58 years has become a living treasury of memories.

In later years, arguments grew fewer and were quickly resolved with forgiveness and sincere reconciliation.

Perhaps the truest mark of our life together is that we no longer need many words. A glance, a touch, a quiet walk are enough.

Today, our marriage is no longer just a contract. It is a steady companionship so familiar that life without each other is beyond imagination.

As we mark 58 years, I am grateful not for the grand moments, but for our steady faithfulness to each other that carried us here. If there is a secret to our “ever after,” it is simply this: We kept choosing each other, in ordinary days and stormy seasons alike. And tonight, given another lifetime, I would still reach for the same hand.