According to my impressively obese dictionary, gestalts can be described as "configurations of psychological elements so unified as a whole that their properties cannot be derived from a simple summation of their parts."

If that be so, there is a measure of gestalt in such diverse configurations as an expertly prepared gourmet sauce and a long-enduring marriage. It is of the latter subject that this is being written, by one who has never concocted a single sauce, but who has been blessed for what seems like forever with a priceless partnership.

Within a few days of this writing, two elderly (statistically, anyway) people will break bread with an only-begotten son, seven heaven-sent daughters and their more-than-just-significant others. Except for the 'm-t-j-s others,' it will be a reenactment - live, in full color and with stereophonic sound - of hundreds of such family meals over the dozens of earlier years throughout which they grew up and before they went away, all to become remarkable adults and exemplary contributors to society, not to mention progenitors of nineteen grandchildren and two great g-babies.

The reunion meal will be to memorialize the event, fifty-five years ago, which preceded and legitimatized their entrances into the world, unintended at times, but never to this day regretted.

As an archival reference to that happening, there hangs in our living room an enlarged candid photograph of two preposterously young and naive kids in traditional wedding costumes, descending, as though from the bright clouds behind them, down the steps of the church wherein they had just been legally designated "man and wife."

In fact, "man" had not yet attained majority and "wife" was still a teenager, but both were unshakably sure that the clouds behind them would always thereafter be under their feet. (Young love may not be blind, but it is usually deaf to practical considerations.)

Well, the anticipated fairy tale hasn't exactly played out that way over the ensuing 20,000-plus days and nights, as their heads left those clouds and their feet hit the ground of reality.

As part of the nuptial ritual, the priest had solemnly noted that "the two shall become one," defining, you might say, a gestalt-to-be, but he had neglected to warn them that such a becoming would entail a whole heap of doing in the bye-and-bye.

Cutting to the present, I don't really relate to the cloud-dwellers in that picture of yesteryear, any more than I can to the time-worn faces reflected in our unisex bathroom mirror each morning, this despite the undeniable truth of who and what they were then and are now.

But come that coming sit-down with our major works in collaboration, the evening will be joyously seasoned with our efforts to extract from the whole of a (so-far) lifetime together, some of the elements of which it was composed.

Among them should be dumb luck - or, if you prefer, highly skilled guardian angels. Had someone told that starry-eyed teen about cumulative years of pregnancy, and her post-pubescent lothario about the frightening responsibilities ahead, both might have bolted from the foot of those church steps like scalded cats. At the time, they neither knew nor cared what problems might lay ahead; and, as luck - or the angels, if you'd prefer - would have it, none of the burdens proved to be unbearable.

What were destined to follow were the half-million or so hours during which they would grow together, learn together, change together, play together, laugh together, cling together, dream together and, of course, fight together - sometimes intramurally, but more often against common enemies and challenges.

They would love together, too, in a process that subtly advanced from and through the passion of youth to the compassion of later years, but never with any loss of tenderness and mutual caring (not counting the occasional and fortunately brief periods of pure loathing which occur in all marriages except those involving big fat liars). They were friends who became lovers, then lovers who became - and remain - best friends, having come full circle from a single pairing through decades of human livestock management, back to the original - albeit physically degraded - configuration.

There is much in the "gestalt" of all this that we don't understand, including how the hell we got through it all, the while avoiding bankruptcy, suicide, murder and/or life-threatening violence. Therefore, the successes we'll celebrate at our family dinner will remain partially shrouded in mystery; but one thing is clear to me, and it is more than enough cause for celebration every day of my life. It is this: To all the world, that former teenage bride may be just one person, but to this particular one person, she is all the world!