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" I like to hum a song from Fiddler on the Roof when I&amp;#039;m snowshoeing with my husband. We snowshoe almost every afternoon when there&amp;#039;s snow on the ground\u2014 which is about half the year here in Haines, Alaska. I love the music and the story.   Never mind that Chip and I are practicing Episcopalians and the characters in the show are Jewish; we still have a lot in common. I don&amp;#039;t sing one of the most popular tunes from the musical, &amp;quot;If I Were a Rich Man.&amp;quot; Rather I hum the short, sweet duet, &amp;quot;Do You Love Me?&amp;quot; between Tevye and his wife, Golde, who have been married 25 years and are raising five children.   Chip and I are celebrating our 29th anniversary this year and have as many children as Tevye and Golde. One of the perks of staying married this long is that now that they are grown and out of the house, we actually have time to spend together to do things like snowshoeing.   This is also the first winter in a very long while we&amp;#039;ve had the house to ourselves, and it is taking some getting used to. When Chip and I sat down to that first quiet dinner\u2014just we two, shrimp instead of meat loaf\u2014I asked, &amp;quot;Do we still say grace?&amp;quot;   &amp;quot;Of course we should,&amp;quot; Chip said. &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;re lucky.&amp;quot; That surprised me because I&amp;#039;ve always been the churchgoer in the family. He started coming after our kids were old enough to notice he didn&amp;#039;t go, and used it as an excuse that they didn&amp;#039;t need to go either. So we held hands and prayed quickly, a little shy about this private display of faith.   Later, after a hot flash woke me up in the middle of the night and I wandered around my empty house to cool off, I wondered what he meant by lucky. Is marriage more about luck than love? Does it hold together because he happens to be good at balancing the checkbook and I have a way with brush clearing? (The biggest Christmas present Chip ever gave me was a commercial-grade gas-powered weed wacker. He even bought me one of those ear-and-eye-protection all-in-one helmets.)   I hope our marriage has more going for it than an agreeable division of chores. Surely there&amp;#039;s more to longevity than luck. Maybe that&amp;#039;s why on this winter walk, I&amp;#039;m singing, &amp;quot;Do You Love Me?&amp;quot;   When we stop for some water, I ask Chip if he were to meet me today, for the very first time, would he call me up and ask me on a date?   &amp;quot;Sure I would. We&amp;#039;re going out tonight. That&amp;#039;s a date, right?&amp;quot; he says.   Sort of. We are going to a dance at the Pioneer Bar with everyone else in town, or as many folks as can fit in the narrow old saloon, because it&amp;#039;s a fundraiser for a good cause. But I&amp;#039;m not a hundred percent sure that we&amp;#039;ll even get there. The band doesn&amp;#039;t play until nine.   &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ll nap,&amp;quot; Chip says, answering the question I don&amp;#039;t have to ask.   I smile. I can&amp;#039;t help it. I love living with someone I know so well. When Chip says he&amp;#039;s taking a nap, what that means is he&amp;#039;s lying on the window seat, reading glasses balanced on his nose, a hunting book folded on his chest, &amp;quot;listening&amp;quot; to Garrison Keillor&amp;#039;s Prairie Home Companion on the radio. A wellworn marriage is as comfortable as an old pair of snowshoeing boots: New ones might look better, but they&amp;#039;d give you blisters.   I wish I&amp;#039;d told the carpenter who built my chicken coop a few years back to think a little harder about ending his marriage, and leaving those two darling children. But who knows what goes on behind closed doors? Sometimes there&amp;#039;s nothing to be done. But at the same time, marriage isn&amp;#039;t like a broken computer\u2014you don&amp;#039;t get a new one when the old one starts to seize up. You do your best to repair it. I had an old married friend whose measuring stick for marital discord was &amp;quot;Will it matter in 10 years?&amp;quot;   Looking back on the harder times in my marriage, I don&amp;#039;t think they seem so bad now. Things were tense when the sawmill Chip was working for went under, paychecks were bouncing, we&amp;#039;d just had baby number two, and my mother saved us by sending $200 checks every month. There were lots of little ups and downs, too, or so they seem now. The hardest was when we thought we were out of the woods with our teenagers, and then one ran into trouble at school. For a while we weren&amp;#039;t sure she&amp;#039;d graduate. It was an exhausting year that tested us in lots of ways. The child is now happily in college. Chip is right. We are lucky, for now.   When we do, in fact, make it to the Pioneer Bar, I watch him reach into his wallet to pay the cover charge. It&amp;#039;s a donation to a local girl&amp;#039;s cancer treatment fund. She is 24 and has just been diagnosed with lymphoma\u2014and she has no health insurance. She&amp;#039;s an artist and takes care of a handicapped woman. It is just not fair.   The cover charge is $5. Chip puts in a fifty. I wish we were rich enough to pay all her bills.   Then my husband takes me out on the dance floor and holds me the way he did back when he was my boyfriend. We sway and swing and step-together doing a not-so-fancy western-style jitterbug. When he wears a ball cap, like he is now, Chip could be the same guy I first fell in love with in college. But he&amp;#039;s not, and I&amp;#039;m glad. I didn&amp;#039;t know then that he would be so excited to hold his babies that he&amp;#039;d ask the doctor to let him cut their umbilical cords, or that I&amp;#039;d see him cry for the first time when we put down our favorite old dog. I couldn&amp;#039;t foresee that he&amp;#039;d say I looked pretty after he politely changed my bedpan when I was in a hospital, or that he&amp;#039;d be so good to his mother, sitting strongly beside her when his father exhaled his last breath. And what I could never have known then was that I&amp;#039;d like my husband even more when I knew him better. Is that luck, love or loyalty? I think it&amp;#039;s all three.   We danced at the Pioneer past 1 o&amp;#039;clock. Before Chip started the truck, he said, &amp;quot;I do love you, you know.&amp;quot; I said I loved him, too. And just as Tevye and Golde sing at the end of their duet, our words won&amp;#039;t change anything, but after 29 years, it&amp;#039;s nice to know. 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<http://www.womansday.com/life/real-women/a5425/tales-of-a-long-lasting-marriage-114575/>