it was twenty-eight years ago today

Twenty-eight years ago today I got married. It was a shockingly brief courtship. You might say I am a person who has sudden realizations about people and I realized within a handful of days that the person I had just one or two dates with should be my husband. I told him by the end of the week that we should get an apartment together asap. He took it in stride, hesitated not at all and by the end of the day we were engaged.

Oh, what a marriage! The love of my life, the friend I so needed.

We traveled everywhere together and I mean that in the broadest sense. He went along on my wild rides to distant places until the internal brakes set him to remain more and more focused on meeting family needs.

I learned most everything about adult life with him by my side. I went from being a twenty-three year old ninny* to a fifty-two year old ninny and not a day passed where I did not measure something about my life with him in my mind’s eye to guide me to a better (or at least different!) resolution.

His address is in Chicago now and mine is in Madison, but we are connected forever in the most profound way. I am as sure today as I was twenty-eight years ago that I am destined always to be his friend and ally and that our care and concern for each other will endure, transcending daily issues and worthless petty details of daily life.

To you, ILYAFA, from me.

* a student nickname, acquired during a not too sober card game