Hi, I’m Heather, also known as “the Daughter,” or you can just refer to me as “the Funny One,” if you’d like.
Thank you all for joining us tonight. Most of you traveled a long way to celebrate with us, and I want to thank you, because that means a lot to my family.
As you know, we’re here to honor my parents’ wedding anniversary. Fifty years—-that’s a long time.
“How did they do it?” I’ve been asked, again and again. “What’s their secret to being married 50 years?”
My answer is always the same. I smile knowingly, I nod, and I invite them in closer. Then I answer in a low, serious tone: I have no idea.
I’m not married, and as an observer, it doesn’t look all that easy. I don’t have a simple answer to what makes a successful marriage. What I do have is a little insight into my parents, the kind of people they are, and maybe that will help.
My parents are nothing short of amazing. They’ve given me and my brothers the most wonderful gifts you could give a child—a happy childhood, and a (mostly) loving family.
They gave us love, and by their actions, they showed us love is more than just three little words you say in passing. They gave us time—dinner together every night, coaching our sports teams, forcing us on family road trips that seemed like hell at the time, but are now some of my best memories.
They gave us a home—and then they opened that home up to all our friends, our family, our neighbors. They gave us the freedom to fly off and become who we are, and they gave us roots, so we could always find our way back.
They taught us so many important lessons. They taught us to be fair, and to treat people kindly, and that sometimes, those things would be really, really hard to do, but that’s when we needed to do them the most. They taught us about hard work, and discipline--and you knew that discipline was gonna hurt something awful when it started out with, “I’m not your friend, I’m your Mother!” (My Dad was also not our friend, though his language was always a little more…colorful…when he told us that.)
My parents taught us to follow our dreams, to speak up for ourselves, and that when we did disagree, to do so respectfully. (A lesson no Dinsdale has yet mastered, by the way.)
They taught us to have a sense of humor, and to laugh.
Out loud.
A lot.
With each other, and often times, at each other. (OK, we taught ourselves that part.)
It’s what I love most about our family, that raucous, demented, teary-eyed, oh-my-god-my-face-hurts laughter. That laughter has gotten us through many a happy holiday, and has seen us through some pretty rough times as well. (Sorry about all those jokes in the hospital, Dad!)
But the lesson they hammered into us the most was how important family is. Having three rotten brothers, I refused to believe that growing up. But they insisted, raising us with an intense, Godfather-like sense of family loyalty. No one will ever look out for you like your brothers, my dad would say, and I would scoff. But he was right. He’s still right.
They’ve given us so much, my parents. They’ve given us everything we needed to grow into happy, successful adults. And best of all, it turns out their gift keeps on giving—because now, we’re handing all those lessons down to a whole new generation of kids, a whole new bunch of rowdy little Dinsdales, who also know that they are immensely loved, and cherished, and funny.
So maybe I really do know how my parents succeeded at being married for 50 years. They just took the same ideas they used raising us kids—love, respect, inappropriate laughter—and applied that to each other, and to their marriage. Turns out there is no big secret, no short cut, to how they succeeded. They just put in a lot of hard work, and commitment. It was teamwork. It was helping one another down the long road to today. It was, as my dad likes to say, one hand washing the other.
So instead of congratulations, I want to say thank you, to my Mom and Dad. Thank you for all your wisdom, your laughter, for being my parents instead of my friends. Thank you for all the love you’ve given me, my brothers, my son, and everyone else in this room. Because tonight, we aren’t just friends, or neighbors—tonight, as my parents taught us—tonight, we’re all family.
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