Mike:
I don’t think I had any preconceptions of what marriage was.

RF:
But you had an image of the institution.

Mike:
Yeah.  It was two people, and they seemed to like each other, at least outwardly—this is my perception of other marriages—some more, some less, than others.  And kids would come along; after all, I knew the mechanics of that, I was a biology major (Juliette laughs).  But I don’t think I thought of long-term either in the sense of “what’s marriage gonna be like?” any more than I thought of, “where do I wanna be five years from now, at work?”  I never did that.

Juliette:
It’s probably different now because they get married a lot later.  You know?  But when you’re getting married and you’re 21, and 23… back then… I don’t know.  It was just a matter of, here was somebody you loved.  And your mother’s married; his mother’s married; my sisters got married…

Mike:
My brother was married…

Juliette:
That’s the thing you do.  You get married.  So that’s what it is, I would say, back then.  In the ‘50s.  You didn’t think it through.  Then it just evolves, it develops.  Then you have children, and then the extended family comes in.  His family, his siblings.  And you’re all getting together, and it’s not just you, and me, it’s my whole family, his whole family, and the perpetuation of that kind of a group.  Marriage includes having everybody, the extended family.  That’s what marriage is.  So you worry about his family… it becomes yours.  That’s what I think it develops into; that it’s an extended small community.