My Husband Is My Polar Opposite. Here Is The Secret To Our Nearly 60-Year Marriage.

He was grinning from ear to ear, and the crowd gave him a standing ovation. My face hurt from too much smiling.

After the party ended, I was glowing for days.

This morning, at home on the porch, we still had to figure out our day.

Throwing his hands in the air,  Neil says, “If you want to accomplish all these things, we have to leave right now.”

“What things?” I ask, lost in the birdsong, the flowers waving in the wind, and the impossibly delicious fragrance of Dial soap.

Raking his fingers through his thick, wavy, salt and pepper hair, he looks at his watch one last time as if, by combing through his hair, he could somehow transform me into a right-brained task-completer like himself.

Whatever seemed so important when I made that list last night is now forgotten.

“I give up,” he says, and the sides of his mouth start to turn upward into an almost smile.

The twinkle in his eye is unmistakable. He joins me on the couch for an early summer snuggle.

“So what about the list?” I ask.

“What list?” he responds.

I know it’s going to be a good day.

Marjorie Weidenfeld Buckholtz is a recovering civil servant following a 25-year stint at the Environmental Protection Agency. Among other initiatives, she developed the EPA Brownfields program, now codified into law. It leverages community grants with local investment to improve neighborhoods and build safer places to live and work. After retirement, she ran a consulting business (Environmental Consulting Solutions) which helped developers and investors navigate government regulations to promote renewable energy demolition and construction. Marjorie took a 35-year hiatus from her first love, free-lance writing, to raise four children with her husband, Neil, a neuroscientist. Now, she is busy with writing and her five grandchildren. At 77, she says she feels like “she is just getting started writing again.” Her work has appeared in The Birmingham (Alabama) News, Grands, Kveller, Tablet, Lileth, Moment, The Government Executive, and others.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost in October 2023.