Happily married? An oxymoron in my world. My family background is filled with marriages that ranged from just okay to horrific. And everything in between.

My oldest paternal uncle drank to excess. It was a family disease. His wife solved the problem by keeping up with him. I am told their daughter cut them out of her life after one visit with them. Cleaning under the bed after her parents went home, daughter Betty found countless empty booze bottles. High marks for the integrity of not trying to cover up their problem?

Orlo and Aline produced four children and had long lives. Beyond the drinking, I heard of few other issues. The marriage seemed stable enough. But my mother shared Aline’s confidence that she spent the entire first year of their marriage “crying over the sink while doing the dishes.” Ergo, the compromise. Since Aline couldn’t beat him, it appeared, she joined him.

Within the family, I heard countless stories about regular and casual beatings of my female ancestors by their husbands. It was partly a familial characteristic but also a cultural one. Punishing one’s wife “to keep her in line” or “straighten her out” was seen in some bizarre way as a husband’s “duty.” Talk about a free pass. Go patriarchy.

Other marriages I heard of in my family were more benign and at least congenial. There were healthy working partnerships here and there. My father’s brothers made good marriages that could be called true partnerships. But inevitably, there were issues. My Uncle Doug died suddenly at just 49 years old. His wife Pat remained a widow for the rest of her life.

My own parent’s marriage fell in the horrific category. There wasn’t much to cheer about except maybe the black humor that came out of it. The marriage was riddled – as was my childhood – with pills and pain and violence and infidelity and histrionics. That marriage came to a decisive end with Mom’s suicide attempt at 42.

Having crawled out of the gutter of addiction and mental illness, Mom eventually found work at a city newspaper. Dad had moved to Newfoundland to find a paying job after the dissolution of his marriage and businesses in New Brunswick. On a visit back to New Brunswick to see his kids, he visited Mom in the newsroom.

A colleague of Mom’s gushed on meeting him: “Oh Mr. Brewer, I can’t tell you how happy we are to have your wife here with us.” (The labels die hard in New Brunswick, with intervening legalities like divorce a mere nuisance.) Without skipping a beat, Dad replied: “Madam, I can’t tell you how happy I am that my wife is here with you.”

To say I had skewed notions of what a marriage was or could be as I entered adulthood would be something of an understatement. A steady boyfriend in my late teens gave me a sweet anniversary card during our relationship in which he wrote: “Let’s make this the first in a long string of anniversaries.” I froze. I could not conjure a mental picture of what that life might even have looked like.

So, of course, I sabotaged the relationship and, in my mind’s eye, “released” him to find a steadier and more suitable life partner. Something stuck though. I never stopped regretting the loss of that relationship.

My first marriage on paper was an unmitigated disaster. I entered it for all the wrong reasons having succumbed to all sorts of social and familial pressures which had nothing to do with what I wanted or needed. In a way, the marriage was as much a victim of my immaturity as his life generally was of his own.

Then I met Hank. Later in life. On the internet. A half a continent away. From a different generation. Ballsed that one up pretty well, too the first time around. But the love didn’t die. We reconnected again three years after to broke up.

I wake up in a state of awe and gratitude every day. I am happily married. There’s that oxymoron again. My husband is like the manifestation of a dream I had a long time ago. Lots. of compatibilities in spite of different nationalities, different generations, and wildly different family backgrounds. On top of the list is our sense of humor.

As I have read it is supposed to be, those differences are strengths in our marriage. We are as much friends to one another as we ever were lovers. We are companions as well as each other’s critics and cheerleaders. He spends a lot of time rolling his eyes at me as I come up with yet another cockamamie plan or idea. I spend a lot of time feeling like the little kid who sulkily defers to the inherent wisdom of his age and experience.

I sometimes wonder what Mom would think. She never remarried after she and Dad divorced. Indeed, I raised my kids alone and stayed single for decades we often muse that god decided s/he was sick of seeing me and Hank flailing around in our respective lives and steered us toward each other.

Though no one can predict how much time we’ll have together, I prefer to focus on what we have today and every day: a happy marriage. Not without issues but full of love and fun and satisfaction.

Don’t know what I would tell Mom if she were still here today. Maybe, whodda thunkit?