Wednesday, August 03, 2011

Wedding Anniversary

Today I have been married 37 years. I admit that it is a little disconcerting that almost everything in my life is now measured in decades. When I got married in 1974 I was a very naive 23 year old and my wife was a 21 year old. We were married four years before our first child came along. Once a young co-worker said to me, “you and your wife were actually married before you had children”? Yes, we were married without children for four years. Our first goal was to own a home. 37 years is a long time. A lot of water has flowed over the dam. It’s mostly been good. We’ve been financially comfortable and we have struggled to pay our bills. We were young when we started but now we sometimes get senior citizen discounts at local restaurants. Life has beaten us up a lot and we’re a little worse for the wear. Our health is not as good as it once was and we now make monthly trips with a wheelbarrow to the Kroger Pharmacy. We’ve raised two good sons and buried three good parents. We don’t think we’re losing our minds but our children think we are. We’re both moving a little slower. I don’t go to as many rock concerts as I did in my youthful 40’s when I attended a lot of Grateful Dead shows. Most of my rocking is now done in my Lazy Boy chair. Sometimes I fall asleep with Led Zeppelin blaring from my stereo system. To be honest my wife and I are rarely out after dark, especially on a work night. My granddaughter wears me out when she spends the night but I love being her “Paw Paw”. My wife doesn’t complain when I buy too many CD’s although she sometimes tells me to turn down my music. I don’t count her shoes or ask her why she has to have the same style in so many different colors. She's a high maintenance "fancy" girl who gets her hair styled and her nails, jewelry, and clothes are always color coordinated. I'm still a tie dyed hippie. Admittedly, the long hair of my past is long gone. We're as different as day and night. However, I can still make her laugh so hard she wets her pants.

1 comment:

ddw said...

We're a little bit older though probably not wiser, and the day before your 37th anniversary, we celebrated our 44th. I was all of 19 and felt I'd seen enough of the world to know what I wanted to do and he was all of 21, in the US Navy, his mother had just died which is why he was home one leave. We knew we were going to marry eventually so why not now so I could handle, as a family member, the paperwork etc. that happens with a death in the family. After all these years, we can still have big laughing fits.