Fifteen

I have to write fast or the magic of the day will have passed, given that it is 11:42, scratch that, 11:43pm and that our fifteenth anniversary is over in 17 minutes.

Fifteen years.  Who'd have thunk?  Certainly not the people who thought we were captial K, Krazy, for meeting in Spring, having our first date on my birthday in late July, and being engaged in October. I think we calmed a lot of nerves when we had the wisdom not to get married in November or December of that same year, but waited to let the high tide of my sister-in-law's wedding roll in and back out before we even dipped our toes in the surf.

I think we reassured a bunch of people when we found ourselves blissfully pregnant on Christmas morning a year and a month later, then repeated parenthood two years later, and finally capped it off four years after that with our last, "YOU AREN'T GETTING ANY YOUNGER", love child.

When we sold our first nest in the midst of the 2008 housing crisis, we raised red flags again.  And those flags were at full staff when we bought a fixer-upper that required an 18-month, almost full-on, renovation.  Mike conducted business from whatever room was quietest in the moment and I filled vacuum bags with extra helpings of dust and wood shavings and whatever the workers-du-jour drug in.

Clearly living in the midst of a multi-month renovation was crazy, but I had the perfect out:  my brain had been sucked out of me by having children.  But what gave with Mike?  Insanity, by proxy is my guess.  Or maybe the fabled "Happy wife, happy life"?  Or maybe, the idea that we wanted to move into our last home, the home our children would spend the greatest majority of their lives in, and make it our own.  So, that's what we did, even as we raised eyebrows along the way.  And regrets?  We have none.

I'd like to think our entire marriage has been about marching to the beat of a different drummer.  We certainly don't fit the pat answer to the demographic we fall into.  And we like it, no we LOVE it, that way. 

And, I'd also like to think that the fact that we both fall to the right of "weird" on the weirdness scale makes our marriage work.  If you don't believe me, let me show you the part of my brain that recorded Mike doing his interpretive dance to "All the Single Ladies" tonight.  It was the entertainment portion of our anniversary evening.  Or maybe he could get you front seat passes to my interpretation of the munchkins welcoming Dorothy to the Land of Oz.  Or the Cowardly Lion's song?  Your pick.  Just bring your lighter.  You'll need it.

I have no one more to thank than God for the time He has granted us together.  He did an amazing job setting our paths in motion, only to cross at the perfect time.  He opened our eyes to each other so wide that others seemed to fall out of even our peripheral vision.  And, I'm blessed to say that that fact remains true today.

Happy 15th, my Knight.  As you sleep beside me this evening, I pray blessings over you and us, that the first fifteen years are just the tip of the iceberg in a very long, very happy marriage.