When my wife and I were married over 44 years ago, we didn’t have the money or the time to have a honeymoon. I worked a full-time job and went to college at night. I was 20 years old and she was 19.
So, after the wedding and the dinner that followed, we went back to a blighted neighborhood, to our rat-hole of an apartment in a dilapidated building which we rented, furnished, for $75 a month.
That night, I asked my bride, “What are we having for breakfast?” She replied, “You can have whatever you want.” I was so thrilled! Marriage was going to be so great!
The next morning, I told her that I was going to take a shower and, after that, breakfast would be great. She replied through a pillow, “Mmgghhff.” After the shower I walked the two steps into the tiny kitchen to find … nothing. She was still in bed.
I awoke her, again, and said, “What are you fixing for breakfast?”
“I’m not fixing breakfast for you. Your arm’s not broken. Fix whatever you want.”
Shocked, I said, “But you said I could have whatever I wanted for breakfast.”
Said she, “You can. Knock yourself out.”
That’s how long it takes for a newly married couple to have their first fight.
I grew up in a traditional household. By that, I mean that my dad worked at the chemical plant, my mother was a homemaker, and we had breakfast together every morning. Somewhere around 7 a.m., my mom would wake me up and I would stagger into the kitchen in my pajamas.
Dad was dressed for work and we would have (typically) eggs, bacon, biscuits, and sawmill gravy. Sometimes, we had pancakes or French toast. We also had milk or orange juice. I don’t recall that we ever had cold cereal or oatmeal.
That pattern continued throughout all my time at home. When my brother was added to the family, it all stayed the same.
Not so in my wife’s house. Cindy’s dad went to work early, there were four kids who pretty much caught separate busses, at separate times, to go to different schools and then Cindy’s mom would go to her job. Breakfast was “on your own.” Or so I was told. Her expectation of the breakfast experience was not at all my expectation of the breakfast experience.
To this day, I can remember what I had for breakfast on the morning after my wedding. I had an Egg McMuffin at McDonald’s. Alone.
We never really did resolve that little dilemma. Actually, I suppose we did. It’s still pretty much “breakfast on your own.” Has been for over 44 years. When two cultures clash, something has to give. Apparently, I gave.
This is what marriage is — two cultures clashing. We’d like to think that the differing cultures merge, bond, blend, and synthesize, but first they clash. It what we do and how we react after the clashes that really matters.
Whatever we have done, apparently it has worked. On our anniversary, I told my wife, “Well, we’ve been married all these years. It looks like we made it.”
Said she, “So far.”
[David Epps is the pastor of Christ the King Church (www.ctkcec.org.). He is the bishop of the Diocese of the Mid-South, (www.midsouthdiocese.org) which consists of Georgia and Tennessee and is the associate endorser for his denomination’s military chaplains. He may be contacted at [email protected].]
