At T.C. Steele Memorial in Brown County Indiana, March 1994

Today is our 17th wedding anniversary.

In one sense, it’s passed in half a heartbeat.  In another sense it’s been forever.

I was 19 when we got married, Tony was 21. In retrospect, that fact alone makes me laugh right out loud. What were we thinking?

We were thinking what everyone is thinking when they get married young… absolutely nothing realistic… and ignorance truly is bliss.

At the time, it made perfect sense, to us at least. Our parents were delighted with our respective choices, that was probably the most important vote of confidence we could have ever gotten, since both sets of parents are still in their original marriages.

Looking back, it still makes perfect sense. Of course if we’d known then what we know now, like everyone pushing two decades in, we’d have been quaking in our boots at very least and more likely running for the hills. But, we didn’t and given the same set of information, we’d make the same choice.

I remember only a few things clearly about my wedding day:

• Someone commented that I was the calmest bride they’d ever seen. I’m rarely nervous at any juncture in life.
• My Dad turned and whispered to me at the end of aisle that if I didn’t want to go through with it that was okay and he’d take care of everything. What a hero. I rolled my eyes, gave him one last, “Daaaad!!!” and we walked.
• My back hurt, relentlessly. A harbinger of the surgery I had scheduled instead of a honeymoon. I was no sooner to the back of that church before I was out of the heels for which the dress was carefully measured and into a pair of lace covered sneakers that my Aunt Patti recommended.
• The only other thing I remember, and this one is crystal clear, is the look in my husband’s eyes. He was the only one in the room by the time I made down the aisle. He still looks at me that way.

That was the wedding, one day. The marriage has happened over and over for 6,205 days, to be exact.

• Houses rented, built, bought, sold, remodeled. We must be crazy.
• Babies: Four
• Toddlers: Five
• School Agers: Four
• Teenagers: Two

That’s a lot of late night rocking, all night cry marathons, noses wiped, shoes tied, seat belts fastened, bedtime stories read, sticky finger prints wiped off, knees bandaged, potty training, phonics taught, and knock-knock jokes laughed at.

In our case, that’s also three continents cycled, seven languages negotiated, caution thrown to the wind and a lot of dreams pursued with relentless abandon.

It’s more than a couple of campfires with bad singing and marshmallows, a summer’s worth of swing dancing lessons after years of stepping on one another’s toes dancing in the kitchen, a lot of long afternoon strolls, hand in hand, through forests and parks, beaches and pastures.

It’s also more heartache, heartbreak, and tears than I thought could fill all of the oceans in the world. I didn’t expect that part, not at nineteen. Even so, I wouldn’t trade a bit of it, well… perhaps a bit of it.  But I wouldn’t trade what I’ve learned as a result.

My favourite things about my husband:

Besides his eyes the color of the Adriatic?

• His relentless pursuit of me.
• His absolute commitment to give us all the best of what the world has to offer.
• His big dreams.
• His sense of humor, dry and quirky.
• That he never walks through the room I’m in without touching me.
• That he does voices when he reads aloud to us at night.
• His willingness to stand knee deep in whatever kind of blood and fight for our family.
• His overwhelming capacity for love in the face of the ugliness of life.

Those are just a few. There are more.

Today we’re dropping the kids off with chosen family and heading into Boston.

We’re having dinner at L’Espalier, a ridiculously expensive restaurant that we were given a gift certificate to for Christmas.

I have a new dress, it’s black and floor length and sparkly. The best part? It cost me exactly 1% of the dinner bill: $2.50. I’m getting a lot of joy out of that!

We’ve been a few places, seen a couple of things, and met a few people since our homespun wedding in the midwest. It’s been a wild ride–in spite of it all, we’re still together.

And we’re happy.

I have to say that today, as we mark the beginning of year 18, I’m happier with my choice than I ever could have imagined as a teenager. I had no clue what I was getting into, no clue what really mattered, and yet, I lucked into a man who is, more and more every year, my knight in shining armor.

Life is a funny thing and marriage is a roller coaster ride that the brochure just doesn’t do justice. In the end, it seems that the best part of the whole thing is sharing the white knuckle moments with someone who throws his hands over his head and screams his way through the ride with you. Seventeen years is a good start.

On the swan boats in Boston Garden last summer- The baby is a rental!