Tuesday, November 14, 2006

Old People Holding Hands

Have you seen that diamond commercial showing couples walking in the park? There’s an old couple and a younger couple. The old couple is taking their time, having a leisurely stroll, holding hands. The younger couple is rushing along in the cold, arms crossed at their chests, ignoring each other. They separate to pass the older couple, one on either side, and when they do, they look back and see how their walk really should be going. They reach out and hold hands, seeing how it could be for them in 30 or so years if they try.

I think the moral of the story is that if you buy your wife diamonds for 30 years, she’ll still hold your hand when even the Viagra doesn’t help anymore.

Old people holding hands gets me every time. All we hear about relationship-wise is divorce, divorce, divorce -- Britney and Kevin, Reese and Ryan, Jessica and Nick, all of the supposed fairy tales falling apart. Old people holding hands means it doesn’t always happen that way.

And of course it doesn’t mean it was a fairy tale for them, either, but they made it. I recently had the pleasure of meeting the grandparents of my significant other, who are in their 80’s and have been married since time immemorial. We went for a day trip around town and stopped at a little river with a walking trail. The two of them walked slowly and carefully ahead of us, hand in hand. I commented on how sweet it looked to Significant Other’s mum, who relayed that someone once told them the very same thing in the grocery store and it turned out that they had gotten into a bitter argument earlier that day, but Grandfather was having difficulty walking because of a bad knee, so Grandmother was only holding him to help him stay upright.

They seemed to have gotten over it by that day at the river. We caught them smooching later.