|
Couples who’ve been married for at least 50 years look young.
An observer might note that they also act young. Mim and Stan Seymour are no exception.
“It’s been very quick,” Mim said.
Don’t look too quickly, Mim, but on Aug. 22, it will be 61 years as two halves of a whole.
“Evidently he had his eye on me,” she said. “It had been there. We were both 24 when we were married and that was fairly adult.”
The spark they have together centers around comfort. In knowing how each other’s minds work. In their surroundings too.
Leather furniture and East Indian flavors tinge the atmosphere of the quiet times they have. Those slow times don’t come too often.
Mim taught deaf children for many years, so she is well attuned to subtlety, lip-reading and appreciating what silence can represent.
“I know what he’s feeling, so he doesn’t always have to say it,” Mim said. “But he does.”
And there’s always that dry wit.
Could it have been a sense of humor gained from his career? Engineers are noted for their quirks. Stan is a retired Bonneville Power Administration systems engineer who also worked radar in the Army Signal Corp.
“I can always depend on him. He’s always there for you,” Mim said. “He has his own ways that’s not exactly other people’s ways.”
“I’m sideways,” Stan said with a barely-there smile.
How two people live together, tolerate each other, or even stand each other for 60 days can be a fathomless question. Let alone 60 years.
Stan said anyone can offer advice, but for them it started through understanding who the other person was.
“We weren’t as sophisticated back then. We grew up together.”
Laughs and love
Mary Seidelman swats her husband Jack lightly on the shoulder, laughing.
“We get along together. We joke a lot. That’s what missing a lot of the time,” Jack Seidelman said. “I josh with everyone I know all the time.”
Is a relationship a matter of tolerance, or of survival? It all sounds so simple — we get along together. Mary is 82. Jack is 91. They look to be merely in their 60s. Their special secret to success starts with taking one day at a time.
“In the morning we’ve forgotten whatever happened the day before,” Mary said. “Everyday is a new day.”
They knew each other as children, but only as acquaintances. That changed when they met again. It was a casual acceptance of values, respect and love.
Three weeks after they said “hello” to each other again, the couple married. They are still the recipients of each other’s smiles after 60 years.
“One day we were just sitting like this talking and it truly didn’t seem like any big thing,” Mary said.
“But, boy did I get a good thing,” Jack replies without hesitation. “My dad fell in love with Mary and he would have killed me if I did anything against her.”
They swap twinkles
Mary talks faster than her mouth moves, and laughs when she creates new words in the attempt. Her energy makes sitting down a chore. She goes out almost every day to help patients and friends at Merrill Gardens retirement home in Gig Harbor. She’s a people person.
“The one thing I regret is that my body broke down quicker than Mary’s,” Jack said. “She’s nine years younger.”
Jack periodically requires an extra oxygen intake to stay comfortable.
“For a long time, Mary was the only air I needed to breath,” he said.
Jack and Mary offer few reasons that could have contributed to their relationship’s longevity. The first one he comes up with however, is dumping their dishwasher.
“At one time we had a dishwasher,” he said. “It used to be I washed them and Mary dried them. But the dishwasher ended that. After only a few months it disappeared.
“We were together again.”
A book, “Mysteries of the Ancient Americans” on the coffee table, lends another clue to their life together. They’ve shared a lifetime of experiences. And traveling was chief among their pursuits.
Whether they’ve been curious about what makes the world move on its axis, or what makes the earth move for each other, they’ve retained a love of discovery.
“I love you. I love you,” Mary said. “We’ve been saying that a good many years.”. | 