Happily Ever After?

     I recently wrote a short story and I ended it with the corny old line..."And they lived happily ever after".
     When I was a child and someone read a story with that ending it usually meant the heroine married her prince and they went off to live in happiness and splendor for the remainder of their lives. But then I started to think just what that line means these days.
     When I was in my twenties and friends were getting married it meant a wonderful wedding and honeymoon followed by the newlyweds getting out of that first apartment, moving into a home and having children.
     When the thirties hit living happily meant having a decent job, travelling and visiting with married friends and their growing families on those rare occasions when they had a free day to spend chatting and catching up.
     In my forties living happily, note the "Ever After" is now long gone, meant that parents, if you still had them, were healthy and thriving and that the teenagers or young adults in your life were interested in the world around them and not self obsessed or substance abusers.  
     By the time I reached my fifties my friends and I prayed that our jobs held out till we reached  retirement age. We put as much money into saving for retirement as was possible and hoped the people that ran the banks and stock market don't screw up too badly. My friends prayed their kids were able to keep their jobs and either finally move out or that they don't move back. We all prayed for the strength to take care of the people we love that might need us in a crisis. And we prayed for no crisis to strike.
     Once the sixties happened I learned that for me living happily meant loosing my job, collecting Social Security, and living my life honestly. For me that meant coming out. (Yes...in case you've been living under a rock, I'm a lesbian.)
     Along the line I learned that even in a life that is relatively happy there are losses. Parents and their contemporaries die. You lose friends to death and circumstances and sometimes the loss will rock you to your foundation. But you get up and keep getting up and eventually you start looking for happiness again.
     For me happiness was discovering facebook and communities of women with interests similar to mine. It means finding friends on the other side of the world. It means having time to read wonderful books. It means time to write a couple of stories of my own.
So did I get my "Happily Ever After"? Not quite all of it but then my story isn't over yet.
     I see a lot of happiness on the horizon. Friends are still falling in love so I know that the possibility  exists. My family moves into the future with my niece expecting her first child come October. And the people I love are healthy.
    You can't ask for a lot more than that.