Have a Little Faith - Mitch Albom [34]
“No,” he answered.
“Okay.” And she left.
It took months for him to follow up, his shyness having taken over, but he did, eventually, and they courted. He took her to a restaurant. He took her to Coney Island. The first time he tried to kiss her, he got hiccups.
Two years later, they were married.
In more than six decades together, Albert and Sarah Lewis raised four children, buried one, danced at their kids’ weddings, attended their parents’ funerals, welcomed seven grandchildren, lived in just three houses, and never stopped supporting, debating, loving, and cherishing each other. They might argue, even give each other the silent treatment, but their children would see them at night, through the door, sitting on the edge of the bed, holding hands.
They truly were a team. From the pulpit, the Reb might zing her with, “Excuse me, young lady, could you tell us your name?” She would get him back by telling people, “I’ve had thirty wonderful years with my husband, and I’ll never forget the day we were married, November 3, 1944.”
“Wait…,” someone would say, doing the math, “that’s way more than thirty years ago.”
“Right,” she would say. “On Monday you get twenty great minutes, on Tuesday you get a great hour. You put it all together, you get thirty great years.”
Everyone would laugh, and her husband would beam. In a list of suggestions for young clerics, the Reb had once written “find a good partner.”
He had found his.
And just as harvests make you wise to farming, so did years of matrimony enlighten the Reb as to how a marriage works—and doesn’t. He had officiated at nearly a thousand weddings, from the most basic to the embarrassingly garish. Many couples lasted. Many did not.
Can you predict which marriages will survive? I asked.
“Sometimes,” he said. “If they’re communicating well, they have a good chance. If they have a similar belief system, similar values, they have a good chance.”
What about love?
“Love they should always have. But love changes.”
What do you mean?
“Love—the infatuation kind—‘he’s so handsome, she’s so beautiful’—that can shrivel. As soon as something goes wrong, that kind of love can fly out the window.
“On the other hand, a true love can enrich itself. It gets tested and grows stronger. Like in Fiddler on the Roof. You remember? When Tevye sings ‘Do You Love Me?’?”
I should have seen this coming. I think Fiddler on the Roof was pretty much the Reb’s worldview. Religion. Tradition. Community. And a husband and wife—Tevye and Golde—whose love is proven through action, not words.
“When she says, ‘How can you ask if I love you? Look at all I’ve done with you. What else would you call it?’
“That kind of love—the kind you realize you already have by the life you’ve created together—that’s the kind that lasts.”
The Reb was lucky to have such a love with Sarah. It had endured hardships by relying on cooperation—and selflessness. The Reb was fond of telling young couples, “Remember, the only difference between ‘marital’ and ‘martial’ is where you put the ‘i.’”
He also, on occasion, told the joke about a man who complains to his doctor that his wife, when angry, gets historical.
“You mean hysterical,” the doctor says.
“No, historical,” the man says. “She lists the history of every wrong thing I’ve ever done!”
Still, the Reb knew that marriage was an endangered institution. He’d officiated for couples, seen them split, then officiated when they married someone else.
“I think people expect too much from marriage today,” he said. “They expect perfection. Every moment should be bliss. That’s TV or movies. But that is not the human experience.
“Like Sarah says, twenty good minutes here, forty good minutes there, it adds up to something beautiful. The trick is when things aren’t so great, you don’t junk the whole thing. It’s okay to have an argument. It’s okay that the other one nudges you a little, bothers you a little. It’s part of being close to someone.
“But the joy you get from that same closeness—when you watch your children, when you wake up and smile at each