champagne anniversary

"Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not loveWhich alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove:O no; it is an ever-fixed mark, That looks on tempests, and is never shaken"

- William Shakespeare, excerpt from Sonnet 116

Tomorrow, March 19, 2014, the wife and I celebrate 19 years of togetherness.

It was on that day 19 years ago that the wife and I succumbed to the inevitable. We were in high school. We were on our March Break. I was 19. Teenagers still, our first date - though we did not know it at the time - was at Red Lobster.  I slept over. The next day, some bird poo landed on my arm. After which, we scored $20 balcony box seat tickets to see Tommy at what was the Pantages Theatre. We got free makeovers at Visage.  We took photo booth pictures (which I still have to find in the memory boxes we've yet to unpack). Our hands brushed regularly when we walked down the street. We lived in a bubble of pure bleary-eyed bliss. Even then we talked about a family together.

Just for fun, I thought I'd share a photo of us 2-3 years later.

I have a feeling I'll be sensing my university friends howling at this memory of us. My son giggled, anyway.

The wife, as you can see, is lovely as ever. I like her hair long like that. She does not. But she did love that thrifted shirt she's wearing. 

We look so much like our children.

We were both in our 2nd year at university, then. I was living in residence. The wife was still living with her dad. I had very recently given myself a truly bad haircut (which my dear sweet roommate and BFF tried her best to fix amid the emotional wreck-over-the-bad-hair that I was), which  I now realize is pretty much my son's current haircut.  At which point, I took the opportunity to explore the butch in me. Although my butch persona didn't quite take, and labels are lame anyway, I can now look at this photo and remember very clearly that no matter how angst-ridden, terrified, and tormented I was at that age (for all the coming out and coming of age reasons) - we had each other and we clung to that knowledge as if it were breath itself - with only landlines and pagers to assure each other of our existence when we were in entirely different cities. 

19 years later, our cell phones keep us connected on the days we find ourselves each managing our own episode of the days of our lives in the same room - and thank goodness for that!

Happy 19th anniversary, wife! I am ever so grateful for the way that time continues to shape the path we find our feet firmly planted upon. The moments haven't been dull. The twists, the turns, the splinters,  the knee scrapes, and the toddler drama in between, they've all been manageable because you are holding my hand. I love you.