Happy Anniversary

“Some time when the river is ice ask me mistakes I have made. Ask me whether what I have done is my life. Others have come in their slow way into my thought, and some have tried to help or to hurt: ask me what difference their strongest love or hate has made.”
- William Stafford

Talk about a glass half full. He asks the question, but does not answer it. Has the strongest love or hate has made a difference in his life? If so, was said difference positive or negative?

And what about us on the 23rd anniversary of my marriage to my one true love? We’ll have dinner at the same place we dinned after our courthouse marriage – a local restaurant within a mile of home. Just us, this week. That wedding dinner included your brand-new stepdaughter of thirteen going on 35, an adolescent with the new-found independence of a latch key child. Stepfather.

These days, we're sharing the frustrations of growing old together, watching our capabilities and cognizance dwindle with our bodily strength and beauty. It’s a bitch to get old, but we have the consolation of doing it together. Thanks for a ride twice as scary in the crazy clown car, stuffed with all the baggage of a quarter century. Thanks for the moral support, the mutual growth, the hard work we both put in

Thanks for all the parenting, the COPD, the depression, and the understanding. Thanks even for the MIL whose own decline has overshadowed our long marriage; and has sapped our strength and diminished the resources left for us to care for one another. Boy, do you guys get on my nerves sometimes.

Thanks for the joy, the accomplishment. We’re learning together how to make our lives progressive – building on the lengthening tail of all our life experiences and becoming better for it despite our mutual decline. Thanks for the kitties, the iPod, the neck surgery. Thanks for the sex, and the love, and the support, and the compassion.

We’ll go to dinner a night or 2 before our actual anniversary. Close enough and mildly more convenient. Here’s my toast:. Let’s keep this circus show of a marriage on the road another quarter century. At some point, I’ll get my own bedroom closet.

I love you. It’s the love that counts. Of all the mistakes you have made, and I have made, and we have made, what we have done is not our lives. What we have done together is the difference the strongest love can make: we’re still alive and we’re still in love. Thanks again.