Dear Kat and Day-Hay,

I realized today that my wedding anniversary is coming up at the end of this month. (For the moment, I even remember which day, unusual though that may be.) It will only be a few years until I will have been with your dad as long as I was not with him. I watched your father in his all-black, backstage outfit yesterday morning and realized all over again that I hope you do something in your lives that makes you as happy as marrying your father has made me.

I believe in promises, I believe in commitment, and I believe in marriage. I also believe, however, that making promises, commitments, and marriages lightly or for their own sake is a risk to health and sanity. I prefer that you be happy and healthy single than to rush into a marriage because you think I would want it. Never marry because someone else wants it or because you think it will mark you as an adult.

Nevertheless, I hope that, by watching us, you�ve seen some of the rewards of the right promises and commitments yet there are still things I want you to know. I plan on being around for a long time but today, just in case, I want to make sure I explain some things to you. Maybe you don�t need to hear them now but you will someday and you can keep this letter around to remind you.

The biggest trick to having a good, solid marriage is to find the right man. Don�t look for the most exciting man. Don�t look for the man most likely to succeed. Don�t look for the most handsome man. Don�t look for someone to make your life complete. Look for the man who shares your most important values. Look for the man who challenges you to be the very best you that you possibly can be. Look for the man who will go hand-in-hand with you through the best and the worst of times. Look for the man who will help you pursue your dreams as well as insist you help him pursue his but don�t expect him to know what you want unless you tell him. No one, not even the love of your life, is a mind-reader.

Finding the right man is terribly important but it is not enough. Marriage, like most things worth doing, requires hard work. No matter what the romantics say, love is not enough. Love is more than a feeling; love is an active verb.

Your father would say that love is a habit and, more and more, I�ve come to believe he is correct. Habits practiced regularly endure. The need to practice your habits requires that you set aside a little time, just you and your guy, to have fun together no matter what craziness the world may throw at the two of you.

The need to practice good habits regularly also explains why small daily acts of kindness will get you through many a fight. The daily acts of kindness are habit and build up good will. Be kind even if you don�t feel like it. Sometimes feeling follows action. Do and the rest may follow.

For the same reason, mind your manners, especially with your man. �Please,� �thank you,� �you�re welcome,� and �I�m sorry� are some of the most important phrases in any language. Contrary to the title of a truly bad novel (and movie), love does mean saying you�re sorry. It also means accepting honest apologies without exacting a pound of flesh.

When you think about marrying a man, look at his family. Look at how he treats his family because it will tell you a lot about how he views family. Look at whether you can stand to be part of his family because when you marry a man, you marry his family---whether you like them or not.

Pay attention to his past because few of us make clean breaks with our past. A single mistake can be just that, a mistake, but a pattern of mistakes is not fixed by a promise to do better alone. You cannot trust that a pattern of mistakes is fixed that easily. You have to watch over time because people rarely change in fundamental ways and they almost never do so because of their spouse.

Once you�ve looked at that past and decided to proceed, accept the past. Everybody has a past. It�s in the past. You can�t fight with ghosts and win. Worse, the energy you spend fighting the past will poison the present.

Even if you marry the right man, and especially if the right man is as strong a personality as either of you, you will disagree and you will fight. Hard as it may be to believe, people continue to grow when they become adults and no two adults grow at the same rate. The growth of two married people can be like the slippage along a fault line. A failure to deal with the pressure as it builds up can result in a catastrophic earthquake.

Sometimes your man will understand the problem but just not agree with your solution. Try not to confuse a lack of agreement with a lack of understanding. The first is far more common and far less significant.

Outside support can be very helpful in sorting out such things but it also has its own dangers. Support is not the same as agreement. Don�t ever confide your troubles with your relationship in anyone who will automatically tell you that you are right or who will tell you that men are no good. Such a person will prevent you from examining yourself and your position and maintaining a good relationship requires a bit of soul-searching from time-to-time. Such a person also has a vested interest in your life not working out, just so that he or she is not proved wrong.

I love you both and I wish you the best always. I wish you everything you need and hope that what you want is what is good for you. I also wish you a man who is as good for you as your father is for me.

Love,

Mom

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