This Father’s Day, I want to celebrate the beautiful life my parents have created for our family, culminating with the incredible love they share for their grandson.
My parents are celebrating their 40th wedding anniversary next week.
Their love story is pretty incredible.
She grew up in Jersey City, and he was raised in Long Branch, but my mother spent summers down the Shore at her family’s vacation home on North Lake Drive in West End, very close to my dad’s house.
My mother and father first laid eyes on one another at the ages of 15 and 17, respectively, while attending a dance at the White Sands beach club in Long Branch.
They’ve never looked back.
I hear stories about their early dates at the Shore Drive-In movie theater in Wall, where my dad attempted some pretty “slick” moves to prove his affection.
A year after they got together, my father left for college at Washington & Jerfferson in Washington, Pennsylvania, close to Pittsburgh. After just one semester and weekly road trips home to visit his love, my dad dropped out and transferred to Monmouth University — then Monmouth College — because they couldn’t stand to be apart.
In 1974, they got married at the Chanticler in Millburn, and in true Jersey-Italian fashion, moved into the two-family house my mother’s parents had in Jersey City. A couple years later, they ventured out on their own and purchased the Eatontown home in which they still reside.
It’s been a long road, filled with spectacular highs that always outweighed the lows. It wasn’t always easy, but their bond has withstood the test of time.
While I reminisce about their early years together, my parents are enjoying a long weekend in Miami with my brother and his girlfriend. As we all tend to do in this crazy-paced world filled with worries and commitments, my mother and father don’t spend as much “one-on-one” time as they should.
The majority of their days are spent baby sitting my 2-year-old son, Dylan, whom they adore more than anything in this world. Evenings are consumed with running errands and doing housework, and by the end of the night, they settle onto the couch for a couple hours of “Sopranos” DVDs.
My mother snacks on her fat-free ice cream while my father dozes off, a result of their conflicting schedules.
Like her grandson, my mom is somewhat nocturnal and doesn’t believe in going to bed while the “sun is sleeping,” as I advise Dylan to do.
My dad is more of an early bird, wide awake at 7 a.m. which, from a working mother’s perspective, seems like an unattainable dream.
Somehow, though, they make it work and reinforce my belief in fairy-tale endings and everlasting love.
I’m glad my brother planned this little getaway for them.
Couples, regardless of how long they’ve been together, should always make time to celebrate their commitment to each other and bask in the rare moments free from distraction.
We have too much clouding our personal space, and if we don’t make the effort to fill it with positivity and light, a gray area begins to form.
My brother and I were raised with strong values, and our parents constantly reinforced the importance of cherishing one another.
Each year on Father’s Day, my mother would take us to Monmouth Park in Oceanport so we could surprise our father, who worked at the ticket window during the summer, and celebrate as a family.
Thinking back, their schedules were never in perfect sync. He took on several jobs so that she could stay home with us, which meant everything else fell onto her plate — maintaining the home, kids and always ensuring that my father had a perfectly packed lunch with a smiley face drawn on the brown paper bag.
When you have a connection that runs 40 years deep, maybe it isn’t necessary to have that constant physical closeness as a reminder that both people are on the same page.
It sure is nice, though, to sit in the sun every now and then, holding hands and traveling back to that first date at the beach.