Cliff, Claire & Klosterman, On Marriage:

"In the nineteenth century, teenagers merely aspired to have a marriage that would be better than that of their parents; personally, I would never be satisfied unless my marriage was as good as Cliff and Claire Huxtable's (or at least as enigmatic as Jack and Meg White's.)"
- Chuck Klosterman, from the essay This is Emo, in Sex, Drugs, and Coco Puffs

Enigmatic or not, Jack & Meg's marriage didn't survive. And Cliff & Claire aren't real, despite their permanent residence in the psyches of a generation. So what should we aspire to in marriage?

Perhaps that's a good question to ask your spouse. In advance of the conversation I plan to have with my husband, I've been trying to answer the question for myself. Here's the best I can come up with:

"I want, on every anniversary, to know that I'd still make the same choice."

Of course there's more to it than that - I want to make him laugh; I want above-average sex; I want to keep learning together; I want new adventures when we're 80; and I want to hold his hand to the very last minute. I want to know I don't have to change every dirty diaper. I promise I'll be able to participate intelligently in conversations about the Bears.

Essentially, I want an intimate friendship that lasts. That's what I aspire to. And why? Well,

I'll borrow an answer from the article by Rachel Combe, posted in the previous entry:

... "The point of marriage, I think, is to create meaning, with every happy and sad memory, every hardship overcome, every kind act, every moment of acceptance, every triumph (Gore will likely never get to have another wife watch him win a Nobel Prize), every child, grandchild, pet, and friend you accumulate ­together. The point of staying married until you die is to have a witness to your whole life, to the meaning you built. In the end, you can look at your spouse and say: Somebody knew me—and I knew them. Which isn’t to suggest you need to marry to have this kind of intimacy, but if you do marry and stay alive to that marriage (it’s possible to live your whole life with someone and never summon up the humanity to get to know them), you will get that reward."

I aspire to make it through marriage so that I know and am known this way. There's more to it than that, but I think that's a pretty good place to start. And if we can manage that ... then each anniversary I'll toast the good choice we made in September of 2001.