Do your parents bicker? Never gave it much thought until our youngest daughter stopped by for a visit and Barbara and I started to bicker. Our daughter suggested we stop fighting. What's with the fighting, we asked. We aren't fighting, we're bickering. Fighting is something you do with a person you don't like, bickering is something you do with a person you love. After 47 years of marriage, we have mastered the art of bickering.

My parents didn't much like each other, but as I recall they never fought and certainly never bickered. Fact is, they didn't talk much to each other and slept at opposite ends of our apartment. Maybe that's why I'm an only child.

Barbara's parents raised six children and had been married 63 years when her mother died at 82. Her dad lived to be 97. Now they were a couple who had black belts in bickering.

One evening when they were in their mid-70s, we were in Chicago for a visit and we played a game of pinochle. About halfway through the game, Barbara's mom was having some sort of stomach discomfort and looked at her husband.

"I think I'm pregnant," she said. Barbara's dad turned red, and dismissed the possibility. Then her mom got a twinkle in her eye. "Oh, yes, I could be pregnant." He turned purple and they started bickering. Heaven forfend the kids would ever think two 70-year-olds still liked to roll in the hay with each other.

So, if you have parents who bicker, feel good about it and explain to your children that their grandparents aren't fighting, they are bickering. And that someday when they have grandchildren, they will have learned to bicker with much love.

Chances are Dr. Laura or Dr. Phil will have me locked up for dispensing such advice without a license. But trust me, bickering is good for the soul.

When Frank isn't working on his new book, "Zen and the art of bickering," he can be reached at fburge@cmp.com.

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