Becoming Keith's wife

Years ago at the beginning of my freshman year of college, someone asked if I planned to go all four years there. At the time four years sounded like a huge amount of time and I could no more imagine committing myself for four years than I could see myself sailing around the world. Instead I planned to take one year at a time. (I ended up going to that college for five years.)

1983

27 years ago today I stood before a minister and guests and committed to spending the rest of my life with a green-eyed bearded Norwegian from Iowa. Aware of the length of a lifetime in vague general terms but totally unable to fathom the logistics of living with someone else for the rest of my life.

1984 - on our honeymoon

27 years is a long time. But when I talk to someone who's been married 

for 50 years, I can't wrap my mind around being married that long.

1993

27 years

Four states.

One son.

Six daughters.

2003

27 years of 365 days with three meals a day adds up to 29,565 meals. I didn't keep a tally so there's no way to know how many meals I didn't cook when we went to Taco Bell, or to a friend's house, or to a church potluck, or bought TV dinners, or I didn't feel like cooking. Just to be on the safe side, I can say that I've cooked at at least 20,000 meals since saying "I do."

2005

Not the most romantic thoughts on an anniversary, but marriage is sharing a life and life is composed of good days and bad days, a little special and a whole lot of normal, high points and low points, flying high and scraping bottom, sometimes stretching and occasionally breaking.

If you were to ask me when I became Keith's wife I would say July 7, 1984. But in all honesty, I'm still becoming his wife. We're not the same people we were 27 years ago. We've learned and grown and matured and regressed. We've experienced amazing moments of emotional intimacy and frustrating episodes of dumb-founding stupidity.

2006

So I'm up for the next 25 years, though the thought of gout, and walkers, and hardened arteries, and loss of memory, hair, and hearing, and Keith getting bushy eyebrows and ear hair is a bit scary.

2010

I'm thankful for 27 years of being married to to the one man out of the 3.5 billion males on the earth that belongs to me. I'm thankful that we didn't give up when things got hard and that he doesn't snore is also a definite plus.

I love you, Keith, even if you don't like sharing your Kindle with me.

Happy Anniversary