Be Wrong for Me

My mother used to say, "I love your father.  I'll probably always love your father, but we're just not right for each other."
I used to keep their wedding photo album in my doll house when I was very young.  I haven't seen that album in years but I know the pictures by heart.  My mother in a knee length white dress and a wide brimmed white hat, standing with my father in their backyard, right where the grassy hill fell into the creek, beyond which woods stretched to the highway.  My father's mustache back when it was still thick and brown, not the gray stubble it is now.  Even though it was the late nineteen eighties, he looked like he was cut right out of an early seventies photograph --maybe a photograph from his first wedding.  My sister, from his first marriage, with tan lines showing above her strapless, pale pink dress.  My aunt, looking barely older than my sister, standing beside her in a matching dress.
These days I find myself thinking of the story my mother told me of taking off her shoes and walking home alone from their wedding reception.  She was wearing white silk stockings purchased at Bloomingdale's and by the time she got back to the house, they were ripped and gray.
It would be easy to say that the right man would not have let her walk home alone from her own wedding reception.  I think that's what my mother was saying when she told me the story.  I would say that people can't be right for each other until they're willing to admit all the ways they're wrong themselves.  Maybe you can't be good with anyone until you're good yourself.  And maybe you can't be better until you admit that you need to be.
My parents just couldn't figure out how to grow up.  I think that's how someone people get it right, after all.  They grow up.  My parents were like adult children.  They threw tantrums and objects and blame when they didn't get their way.  They said hurtful things just because they could. 
I think the couples that get it right are just made up of two people who are each grown up enough to know when they're wrong.  I think if you can say you'll always love someone, but they're just not right for you, then they might be right for you, but you just aren't grown up enough to be okay being the one who's wrong.
And maybe I'm wrong, but I'd be okay with that.