17 Years Ago Today

The wife and I were married.

This is a photo of the college singing / acting group we met in.


The wife is standing third from the right - you can recognize her because it looks like the hair spray can exploded on the left side of her head.

I am standing in the back row and for some reason I am the only one (other than our sound guy on the far left) not dressed in my matching teal button down.

I actually think that fabric pattern is now illegal in 37 states unless you are over the age of 70 - and even then, it can only be used as window treatments for people who are already suffering from dementia (it would be cruel to make a sane person stare at curtains of the stuff).

It has been quite a ride, these past 17 years. We have lived in 11 homes in three states. We shared our lives with two cats who we received as kittens and buried in a corner of our backyard when they died of old age.

There have been marriages and divorces, births and deaths. We have alternately pushed one another to the edge and pulled one another back from the brink. A couple years more and we will have spent more of our lives together than we ever did apart.

What a blessing it is to look over at your friend, your partner, your spouse, and realize that you have history together. Innumerable smiles and tears and more moments of grace and beauty than can be remembered.

And when things get tough, as they do from time to time, what an assurance to have a woman who stubbornly declares that she would rather be unhappy with you than happy without you.

17 years.

As I sit here at my dining room table, the house is silent. My wife is at work, my daughter is down for her morning nap down the hall to my left, the dawg is asnooze on his bed in the family room to my right. When I look up from the keyboard, I see the nectarine tree in our backyard through the kitchen window. Everywhere I look I see HER. Everywhere I look I see HOME.

We will celebrate this evening when my wife returns from work and we will take the day to do nothing but concentrate on our little family tomorrow.

Marriage can be hard, no doubt about it. But when I see my wife across a sunlit space with our baby girl in her arms I know I am glimpsing a corner of heaven.

And I am reminded that this really is a terribly beautiful life.

Happy Anniversary, my love. You are my home.