On May 31 Cathy and I will celebrate 29 years of marriage. It’s an event I’m approaching uneasily.

On the one hand, I want to rub the fact in the face of everyone I meet.

I have been married nearly three decades!

Is that not a titanic achievement?!

I want buttons and t-shirts printed up with the number 30. I’ll wear them and people will ask: “what’s with the 30?” And I’ll reply: that’s how many years I’ve been married.

“Damn,” they’ll say.

Damn right.

But on the other hand, the pride melts into a messy goo of guilt and humility.

The fact is, we never reach 29 years without some sensationally practiced forgiveness.

For my part, I’ve generously forgiven Cathy for everything I’ve understood to be her fault, which is to say every single bad thing that has ever happened to us since the day we were married.

And Cathy has forgiven me, too. She’s forgiven me for countless acts of rudeness, cruelty, selfishness and weakness. She’s forgiven me for clinging to dim-witted ideas of what it means to be a husband.

She’s protected my pride when it didn’t deserve to be protected. She has endured a million haughty “I told you so’s,” and has silently allowed to pass twice that number in opportunities to reciprocate.

An example: Years ago, the kids, barely out of diapers, are asleep in the back of the car as we begin a five-hour drive home from a rainy week of camping at Pennsylvania’s Prince Gallitzin State Park. It’s been a tiring week and Cathy falls asleep soon after we get on the southbound state highway that will take us to the PA turnpike, which we will then drive east to get home.

We’re still on the state highway when Cathy wakes up and says, “We should be on the turnpike by now. I think you missed a turn.”

Irritated (she’s been asleep, how could she know this?) I reply “no, I haven’t. Go back to sleep.”

But she bolts upright and asks to see the map, which triggers a 25-minute argument of increasing intensity. I’ve already wakened the kids and am in mid-bellowing-sentence asking that she SHUT THE HELL UP when we top a crest and see the sign: “Welcome to Maryland.”

While I silently turn the car around and wonder why God hates me so, she soothes the kids and settles back into her nap without so much as a weary sigh in my direction.

Thirty years of marriage. Four apartments. Three houses. Two dogs. Four cats. Two hamsters. One snake. A strapping son (his snake). A perfect daughter. Ten cars. Lots of loving, fighting, forgiving, learning, breaking, fixing, apologizing and promising to try to do better.

Incredible messes.

Indescribable joys.

I have long been awed when, at wedding receptions, long marriages of 40, 50 and 60 years are recognized.

I’ve searched the eyes of those honored, looking for some sign of special wisdom or endurance.

But only one common thing has been reflected back from those eyes: a simple look of gratitude.

That look must be in answer to all those shared acts of mercy and forgiveness that made those many years possible.

I want to try to remember that look and let it inform my relationship with the wonderful girl I married, the wonderful woman who is my wife.

I still want those buttons though.

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