It was bad news for me when the Wall Street Journal called the Gores’ breakup after 40 years was the ‘new normal.’ I’ve been married 40 years this week myself, to David Marotta! And  - gasp! - my veil looked just like Tipper’s!

And the similarities don’t end there: David was in Al Gore's class at Harvard, though he’ll be quick to tell you that “Love Story” was NOT based on him, nor did he invent the Internet. He says all he did was play Freshman Football and, since he couldn’t afford to buy the books, read his course assignments right in the library, starting around three days before Finals.

He also made his bed every day, played cards by the hour and just generally did a whole lotta Not Much Else until I came along his senior year and we began hanging out with my big funny family.

We got married the second I graduated in 1970 and I have to say in honor of Fathers Day 2010 that the idea of walking away after only 40 years strikes me as totally nuts - because isn’t the best stuff just now starting when you’ve gotten past the early innings and have finally stopped trying to change or blame the other guy, or grab the moral high ground all the time?

The Journal piece, written by Jeff Zaslow, also cites a survey sponsored by the British dating site ForgetDinner which reports that “people married one year spend 40 minutes of an hour-long dinner engaged in conversation. By 20 years of marriage, they're down to 21 minutes, by 30 years it's 16 minutes. Those married 50 years are talking for just three minutes.”

Well!  WE sure didn’t spend that long talking over those first-year dinners! We didn't have food enough for that. We could’ve eaten the roaches that hopped all over those student-housing apartments  to extend things maybe; crisped ‘em up in one of the zillion fondue pots we got as wedding presents.

Twenty years in it’s true that our dinner-talk only lasted about 21 minutes but that’s just because we could hardly make ourselves heard what with all those other noisy individuals, the offspring resulting from that yeasty early years.

And at the turn of our third decade, we were too busy executing our kids’ desire to have people join us for dinner: pals of theirs, honorary kids still in the area, even the chance solicitor knocking at the door. David and I just keep bringing on the chow. Who had time to talk?

Now because this British survey has nothing to say about dinners a full 40 years in, I will tell you what happens:

You can break all the rules, because it's just the two of you again.

David now wants to eat standing up like a horse all the time, maybe because he can’t wait to get back to the crossword that he’s afraid to bring to the table ever since that time I took a match to his Sudoku.

So there he is most suppertimes, standing and eating at the island like a commuter at a pushcart. It used to make me crazy – until I got the idea of sitting right up ON the counter, legs crossed underneath me, and eating like that.

It works, actually.

We’re at eye level.

We chew.

We talk.

And after 40 years, there’s more to talk about than ever, trust me.

If people looks in the window and see two diners, one a standing man and one a woman in apparent  I-Dream-of-Jeannie-style levitation, sure they might be flummoxed. Hey, we’re flummoxed ourselves most of the time, but happy I can tell you. Happy.


See Terry’s writing daily and leave your own remarks for all to see by commenting at her blog “Exit Only” www.terrymarotta.wordpress.com  . Talk to her there by clicking on ‘comment’ at the top of any posting, or by going to www.terrymarotta.com , or writing her care of Ravenscroft Press, Box 270, Winchester, MA 01890.