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          Al and Tipper Gore announce separation...

The high school sweethearts, married for 40 years, say it's 'a mutual and mutually supportive decision. Friends and associates seem shocked.  

Reporting from Washington — — They were the happy exceptions — high school sweethearts whose passionate romance led to a famously stable marriage in a capital perpetually rocked by tawdry scandals and sleazy affairs.

But less than a month after they marked their 40th wedding anniversary, former Vice President and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Al Gore and his wife, Tipper, announced they were breaking up.   From June 02, 2010|By Bob Drogin and Kathleen Hennessey, Los Angeles Times 

Sure, it's been a few months since this bit of news burst my bubble but I'll never forget that pit in my stomach feeling after first reading about the separation of Al and Tipper Gore.  Maybe I'm alone here, but a separation after 40 years of marriage just seems soooo tragic.  I mean, that's a really long time.

I can't help but ask myself, were they ever really happy during those forty years or was it all just a matter of convenience, appearances or routine?

Whatever the reason, this particular separation news sincerely left me incredibly disappointed.

F o r t y  y e a r s  of togetherness ending in an I don't want to do this anymore parting of the ways has me scanning through my own blissful marital years and rating each one on a scale of 1 to 10, a bit like I tend to rate each consecutive daring bout on my favorite thrill ride, The Hulk, a twisting, looping roller coaster at Universal Studios Island of Adventure's Theme Park, here in Orlando.

Just hearing that such a seemingly perfect, and dare I say, down right picturesque looking couple losing control of the big round wheel, veering over way too far and blowing out a tire after so many years of keeping it on the road, well,  a fairly happily married person such as myself can't help but be a little shaken, can they?  What exactly does this sort of so far into it type of failed marriage stuff mean for the naive little creatures like me who just recently did a fully evolved happy dance in celebration of my comparatively brief but definitely significantly triumphant twenty-two year marital run?

Allow me to clarify, I'm not a bumper sticker blazing, Gore-Groopy or anything.  I originally just made a mental note of the couple because they had appeared to be genuinely united, close, you know, admirably devoted through thick and thin alike.   Heck, didn't I even see them together on Oprah just a short while ago?  That's some serious couple history.  If I'm remembering correctly, together they've managed the depths of grief, weathered the waves of personal loss, illness, political defeat, public scrutiny and somehow amazingly never seemed to allow any of it to stop them from moving ahead as a team_ until now, or, so it seemed.

Mostly I'm thinking that this should remind me that everything in life must be approached one day at a time.  

If today is good, then, by all means celebrate it and if today isn't what you'd like it to be, well, I'll get to that in a minute, but do, do, do celebrate the good days that you get when you get them_ d o n 't  
w a i t!

Next,  I'm thinking that maybe I'm suppose to be sure to pay close attention to both the small and large stuff that each day at a time brings because, eventually, everything counts.

Sometimes, I must admit, I don't want to deal with so much stuff so I find a quick and easy way to put it away,  trying my best to keep the playing field tidy_ Joe and I both tend to prefer a tidy field, certifiable neat freaks that we are, and all.  But seriously, if someone can cram a closet to the brim and overflow a fridge and pantry to the degree that I seem to accomplish in my effort of at least maintaining a tidy-ish looking field, my thinking being that what you can't see at least can't trip you, well, I'm  no PHD or anything, but I'm guessing that same someone could quite possibly cram potentially toxic feelings and frustrations away just as well as the next 'happy-clam'  and, from what I'm understanding Dr. Phil and all of the many other published marriage counselors of the world to be saying at the moment, cramming unaddressed emotions away is bad,  r e a l  b a d.

So, out with it, I say, get those thoughts and feelings out of cold storage and pay attention to the good and bad that is happening right now rather than stuffing it away in an already full closet of unmentionables or avoiding it via any other get your life organized and looking good on the outside, issue skipping, keep my life looking as rich and fulfilling as the Jones - method of choice.

Finally, maybe more than anything else, I am no longer under the illusion that either Joe or myself are psychic.

I am responsible to make my thoughts, feelings needs and everything else hiding in the bathwater known to my partner in life just like he is the only one who can let me know how all of the everyday life stuff is honestly jiving with him.  LIke I've said, this whole Al and Tipper thing caught me totally off guard, so, as well as I think I may know this guy I've been living with for the past 22 years, I must hereby confess, super powers or not, I cannot read his mind.  That reality unveiled, I recognize that I must make every effort to keep the lines of good ol' communication, open.  Concerns left unspoken in marriage are as lethal as a secret diet of daily Big Macs.  Eventually it all comes out and, oh brother, just like the waistline of a daily Mac eater, it can be ugly.

Like I typically reflect following nearly all of my fear defying jaunts on The Hulk,  I look back on my ever eventful marriage experience and say,

"Amazing! Sure, we've had our share of ups and downs and even some frighteningly rough patches but, wow, let's do it again!"

While my own twenty-two years and counting marital thrill ride has occasionally been more than a little bit jarring, has come frighteningly close to derailing once or twice and gone so far as to have taken my breath away in both good and not so good ways,  all in all, I'm glad that Joe and I took the plunge back in the late eighties.  I'm happy to report that the overall wedded bliss ride, like most on The Hulk, fairly consistently rates somewhere between a well intended high 7 and a glorious, triumphant 10.

Not too, shabby.

Okay, there is that one time when, against my better judgement, I rode The Hulk right after a rather large lunch which was a HUGE mistake, so, every adventurous wild ride hasn't exactly left me wanting to hightail it back to the beginning of the ever winding, unbelievably long and time absorbing waiting line, giddy for more.  Still,  given enough time for lunch to settle, more often than not,  I'm happy to get back in line, eagerly anticipating the chance to embrace every dip and gravity defying whirl, just one more time.

Ready or not, twenty-three years, here I, I mean, we, come.

Hey, that's cool...  twenty-three happens to be one of my all time favorite numbers.  


I wonder what forty meant to the Gore's?  


On second thought, maybe I don't want to know.