Our daughter (a recent summa cum laude UCF grad – yay Amy!) and her boyfriend just celebrated a minor milestone: a three-month anniversary. Being a smart fellow, Steve marked the occasion with a little gift. As Amy happily told us about her evening, she realized something.
“Hey, when you guys had been dating for three months, you were already married!”
It’s true. Mark and I celebrated our 20th anniversary this month, which means it’s been 20 years and three months since our first date. And we were engaged for two of those three months! Looking back, I’m surprised that our parents didn’t try to slow us down. If Amy and Steve came to us with talk of marriage right now, we would be hitting the brakes so hard that all central Florida would hear the squeal.
But Mark and I probably wouldn’t have heeded any warnings anyway. After all, we were 30, which seemed old at the time, and we were full of confidence. Reminiscing over our wedding pictures, we have to laugh at those young versions of ourselves, standing at the altar, making pretty serious promises for two people who didn’t know each other very well!
Fortunately, our gamble paid off. As the issues of life arose, large and small, we discovered more about each other, and most of the surprises were good ones. Mark, it turned out, is more consistently kind and supportive than I dared to hope for. And he is willing to cheerfully eat cereal for dinner. He does, however, watch a whole lot more dopey TV than he let on during our brief courtship!
As for me, I’m sure I turned out to be more high maintenance than Mark expected. But I think he got some pleasant surprises, too, like my ability to make a delicious apple pie without needing a recipe, and my willingness to gamble everything we had on starting Our Town, which celebrates its 13th anniversary next month.
That’s two gambles that have worked out for us, the marriage and the business, and two is enough for me. Or…hmm, maybe it isn’t enough. After all, living life on the safe side wouldn’t have brought us to this wonderful point in our lives. Perhaps Mark and I should take some more chances together. But not now. Now, I just want to sit back and relish the celebration of anniversaries, large and small. Thanks for reading!