Marrying Up

by Ellen Buckhorn

My husband was born in 1957. I was born in 1967. For seven months of the year he is eleven years older than I am, though most of the time I don't really feel like it's such a big gap. I'm the fifth of six children so he never seemed much older to me than my oldest sister and her friends. But occasionally, the fact that I am pretty firmly in Generation X and he is from what I've heard referred to as Generation Jones is very apparent.

When we first met I had just turned thirty and he was forty. As I started falling for him I found myself rationalizing the age difference. I told myself that he was no older than some of the musicians and actors I'd had fantasy crushes on, so why should it bother me in real life? He didn't act significantly older than I was and he didn't look that much older, either ... well, except for that bald spot, but that never stopped me from lusting after Patrick Stewart did it?

The first time I noticed that we did have this gulf between us was when the university we were attending had a '70s dance. Most of the students attending school there were undergrads and hadn't even been born before the decade had ended. The two of us, though, we knew what it had been like. Or so I thought. Apart from short stints in other countries, my husband had spent his entire life in Sweden. I had an image in my mind of him dancing to ABBA in the discos of Malmö. I figured everyone who lived through the '70s could at least do the Bus Stop or the Hustle without even thinking about it. My mother had signed my sister and me up for "Social Dance" lessons where we learned those two, right alongside the waltz and the foxtrot. Sure I was only in fifth grade, but I learned it. I tried to get him out on the dance floor to show these kids how it ought to be done. He didn't have a clue.

Ok, so he wasn't a disco dancer. That might actually be a good thing. No need to live down the embarrassment of those nights spent in polyester leisure suits. I put down a lot of the little hiccups in our shared timeline to cultural differences. I couldn't really expect him to be able to recite lines from The Breakfast Club or to get it if I made a reference to some Mike Myers Saturday Night Live character. The music scene I was immersed in during my twenties is totally foreign to him as well, but I did favor bands that were generally out of the mainstream so that wasn't entirely unexpected. Still, there are moments when it's clear that what we're up against is nothing more than a generation gap. It's usually when we're watching the news that they creep up on us. Recent jumps in gas prices brought out old footage of the gas lines in the '70s. I remember waiting in the car with my aunt Linda in a gas line. I think I was in the sixth grade. He was in college. While he was completing his mandatory military service, I was in third grade. When he was getting divorced from his first wife, I was having my first kiss.

The longer we're together, the less our age difference matters. We have two young children now and we're both learning about Dora the Explorer and whatever other new craze comes along for the pre-school set. We're equally clueless about what's "in" these days and we're navigating the uncharted waters together. He says we keep him young. Just don't ask him to dance.