Firefighter sees marriage as an eternal flame
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Mathis Winkler
A beautiful, open flame. Not blazing. Not smoldering. Just a beautiful,
open flame.
That’s how Michael A. Treanor, a veteran firefighter with the Costa Mesa
Fire Department, would describe marriage if he’d relate it to his work.
“When [the flame] goes to smoldering, it loses oxygen and suffocates,” he
said. “That’s when it has to be rekindled or it dies.”
For more than two decades, Treanor and his wife, Carmela, both 55, have
counseled Catholic couples about the ups and downs of married life. As
required by the Roman Catholic Church, everyone planning to tie the knot
has to attend preparation sessions to ensure that both partners know
they’re about to make a commitment for life.
So it’s a bit like traffic school?
“No,” Michael Treanor said. “More like driving school. In traffic school,
you’ve already made the mistakes.”
Fortunately, he added, the counseling helps some couples realize it might
not be the right time to make the ultimate commitment.
“They say, ‘We’ll hold off for now, because maybe we’re not quite ready,’
” he added.
Although they were 20 years old when they stood at the altar April 24,
1965, staying together was never in question for the Treanors.
“Carmela and I married very young,” Treanor conceded, “but with the
strong belief that it was forever.”
Sitting together in a Fire Department office, the couple talked about
their marriage, saying their faith in God’s guidance has helped them grow
as a couple.
“You marry with God and Christ present,” Carmela Treanor said. “You are
never alone and [you’re] strengthened by the love of Christ. ... We die
to one another. We give up our personal lives to be a couple and rise to
something beautiful.”
The Treanors have tried to pass on their experience to younger people who
are thinking about marriage. While also involved in volunteer work with
the church, Michael Treanor said talking about life as a couple was one
of the things he knew best.
“There are two things I know: being a fireman and being a father and
married,” he said. “I can teach that.”
Teaching about marriage also involves talking about inevitable problems,
his wife added.
“We let people know that we’re normal,” she said. “We have good days and
bad days.”
The couple sometimes disagreed on methods for raising their eight
children--he favored a strict education while she was more compassionate.
Mornings also used to be tough for the couple.
“God made sunrises for me,” Michael Treanor said.
His wife, on the other hand, wasn’t impressed when her husband woke her
at 5 a.m. on a cruise to let her know what the cooks were up to.
“Now, I get up with him in the morning,” she said. “We just don’t talk.”
The Treanors started counseling couples in six-week seminars at their
Anaheim home.
Since then, Carmela Treanor has made the transition from stay-at-home mom
to director of family life at the Catholic Diocese of Orange.
As part of their volunteer counseling commitment, she and her husband
talk to audiences of more than a hundred people and speak with Mater Dei
High School seniors in Santa Ana.
One of their daughters attended those school seminars as well. But while
two of their children are married and have gone through marriage
preparation themselves, the Treanors left the guidance sessions up to
others. Or maybe not?
“You can talk about what it means to be married,” Carmela said. “But
they’ve lived this life with us, and they can see how we’ve devoted our
lives to each other.”
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