Thirty-one. If you’re talking about a person’s age, a 31 year-old is a young person. But in the context of marriage, 31 years seems like a really long time for two people to be together. I guess that’s why it’s hard for me to believe that Steve and I have been married that long. Time has gone so fast…we can’t be that old! But there’s no denying the math; we were married on June 16, 1984 on a breathtakingly beautiful Saturday in San Francisco.
So this year, in honor of our 31st wedding anniversary, we did something really unusual for us: we celebrated it. It’s embarrassing to admit that we’ve let the prior 30 anniversaries – except our first anniversary when we went through the ritual of eating the freezer-burned wedding cake that we had saved – pass by unacknowledged. Our 26 year-old son had no clue what our anniversary date is until we told him yesterday.
What’s our lame excuse for ignoring the Wood (5th) anniversary, the Tin (10th), Crystal (15th), China (20th), Silver (25th), Pearl (30th) and all the anniversaries in between? “We’ve been busy,” she said sheepishly.
Once we had children, that’s where all our focus went…probably too much so. I’m sure our kids would not have suffered if we had taken a night away from them to honor our anniversary date. It might have even been a little shocking to them – in a good way – and demonstrated to them that the world didn’t begin when they were born…that their mom and dad were a couple with interests and activities and even some fun(!) before they arrived on the scene.
Now that our youngest daughter is in college, those years of intense parenting are behind us. We’ve entered the next phase of our lives when it really is all about us as a couple. It’s about time that we begin celebrating us!
So here’s a toast to another 31 years. Steve will be 101 (but because he’s blessed with such good genes he’ll only look like he’s 80) and I’ll be a youthful 89. God willing…if we make it to 2046, I’m sure we’ll still be wondering how it can seem like we blinked, and 62 years flew by.