Happy Anniversary, Dad and Flipp.
My dad hasn't always been lucky in love. His marriage with my mother lasted 15 years, and while I truly believe that when they met they were head over heels for each other and thought their love was the kind that would last forever, over time they grew apart and found that their interests, wants and needs were so strikingly different that it couldn't be ignored. To this day it still amazes me that they even lasted as long as they did considering who they are now: polar opposites with hardly anything in common but my brother and I.
After the divorce, my dad had a series of girlfriends who were usually more serious than not. His second wife was Magda: 15 years younger than my dad with three kids and little to no college education. To be quite frank, I thought that Magda was trashy, poor, and full of drama (as were her kids). I felt that she had absolutely nothing in common with my intellectual, highly successful father, and to this day I'm still not sure what he saw in her. Regardless, my dad fell for her hard and fast. They were married six months after meeting, but he would later tell me that he wanted an anullment while on their honeymoon. Needless to say, their marriage crashed and burned almost as fast as it began.
One of the few times I've seen my father cry was when he sat my brother and I down and told us he did everything he could to save his marriage with Magda, but his efforts were lost on her and he had to file for divorce. As it was with my mom, this divorce was extremely painful for him to go through--emotionally and financially. Though my father (who was about 50 years old at the time) didn't know it then, this second divorce was a blessing in disguise because it gave him the opportunity to meet his true love.
The day after his divorce with Magda was finalized, my dad asked Frances out on a date. Later on my dad would make a point to say that when he asked out Flipp (he gave her the nickname by combining the 'F' from Frances and the 'Lipp' from her surname Lippmann), he only did so because he "wanted someone to go to the hockey game with." Almost a year after their first date, at a similar hockey game with their kids in tow, he made a grand gesture of publicly asking Flipp to marry him in front everyone at Selland Arena with the help of the Fresno Falcons mascot during the period break antics.
Never in my life had I seen my father, the "unromantic", do anything nearly as romantic as that, so it was in that moment that I knew their love would last forever.
It's been 6 1/2 years since their relationship started and this weekend they are celebrating their 5 year wedding anniversary here in Ojai. Two double-divorcées, with children, working in the same building for several years, found love in the second half of their lives. And not just any kind of love, but passionate, exciting, adventurous, silly, comical, ever-lasting love.
They laugh. They make fun of each other. They never get tired of each other. They travel constantly. They own a house, two cars, and half a dozen bicycles. They go on bike rides in the mornings together. They watch football and shout from the top of their lungs when their team wins. They go to concerts, plays, and musicals regularly. On their lunch breaks at work they take a walk around the campus holding hands. She's willing to be a part of his interests and genuinely enjoys doing so; he's willing to compromise on not being so frugal and spring for nicer hotels, meals, and even riding in a limousine when her mother died (he absolutely hates limos).
The instant you meet them you see their passion for each other, and after all these years, I haven't seen it fade even in the slightest amount. Their wedding was on the shore of Lake Tahoe with nobody present other than the minister who married them. They don't wear wedding rings because they don't need/believe in them, and lately I have seen them joking about how their prenup is about to expire and now they can "finally get rid of each other." To some, that joke may sound cruel and hateful, but if you know them, then you know that they've found the secret to keeping their love alive: making jokes at the others' expense, goofing around, learning something new every day, and never letting their thirst for adventure, travel, and life experience to be quenched.
It is, in so many ways, the love I'm searching for. I can only hope that someday I will find myself in a marriage as blissfully happy as theirs is.
After the divorce, my dad had a series of girlfriends who were usually more serious than not. His second wife was Magda: 15 years younger than my dad with three kids and little to no college education. To be quite frank, I thought that Magda was trashy, poor, and full of drama (as were her kids). I felt that she had absolutely nothing in common with my intellectual, highly successful father, and to this day I'm still not sure what he saw in her. Regardless, my dad fell for her hard and fast. They were married six months after meeting, but he would later tell me that he wanted an anullment while on their honeymoon. Needless to say, their marriage crashed and burned almost as fast as it began.
One of the few times I've seen my father cry was when he sat my brother and I down and told us he did everything he could to save his marriage with Magda, but his efforts were lost on her and he had to file for divorce. As it was with my mom, this divorce was extremely painful for him to go through--emotionally and financially. Though my father (who was about 50 years old at the time) didn't know it then, this second divorce was a blessing in disguise because it gave him the opportunity to meet his true love.
The day after his divorce with Magda was finalized, my dad asked Frances out on a date. Later on my dad would make a point to say that when he asked out Flipp (he gave her the nickname by combining the 'F' from Frances and the 'Lipp' from her surname Lippmann), he only did so because he "wanted someone to go to the hockey game with." Almost a year after their first date, at a similar hockey game with their kids in tow, he made a grand gesture of publicly asking Flipp to marry him in front everyone at Selland Arena with the help of the Fresno Falcons mascot during the period break antics.
Never in my life had I seen my father, the "unromantic", do anything nearly as romantic as that, so it was in that moment that I knew their love would last forever.
It's been 6 1/2 years since their relationship started and this weekend they are celebrating their 5 year wedding anniversary here in Ojai. Two double-divorcées, with children, working in the same building for several years, found love in the second half of their lives. And not just any kind of love, but passionate, exciting, adventurous, silly, comical, ever-lasting love.
They laugh. They make fun of each other. They never get tired of each other. They travel constantly. They own a house, two cars, and half a dozen bicycles. They go on bike rides in the mornings together. They watch football and shout from the top of their lungs when their team wins. They go to concerts, plays, and musicals regularly. On their lunch breaks at work they take a walk around the campus holding hands. She's willing to be a part of his interests and genuinely enjoys doing so; he's willing to compromise on not being so frugal and spring for nicer hotels, meals, and even riding in a limousine when her mother died (he absolutely hates limos).
The instant you meet them you see their passion for each other, and after all these years, I haven't seen it fade even in the slightest amount. Their wedding was on the shore of Lake Tahoe with nobody present other than the minister who married them. They don't wear wedding rings because they don't need/believe in them, and lately I have seen them joking about how their prenup is about to expire and now they can "finally get rid of each other." To some, that joke may sound cruel and hateful, but if you know them, then you know that they've found the secret to keeping their love alive: making jokes at the others' expense, goofing around, learning something new every day, and never letting their thirst for adventure, travel, and life experience to be quenched.
It is, in so many ways, the love I'm searching for. I can only hope that someday I will find myself in a marriage as blissfully happy as theirs is.
posted by Jenn at
10:44 PM
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