How Time Flies

This coming Friday Mary and I will have been married thirty-seven years. We’ll celebrate in part by flying to Fort Collins to see Rachel and Steve (who will celebrate their second anniversary tomorrow) in their new Colorado home. I’ve challenged myself to remember the details of our first anniversary, and I vaguely recall that we spent it in Win Schendel’s New York Life office as I prepared to make the transition from Coca-Cola route salesman to field underwriter. Mary was preparing to graduate Metropolitan State College and our yuppie future seemed imminent. In the years since, we have become something of an anomaly with regard to both our own peers and our children’s. Even I consider it rather remarkable that since that first date on Valentine’s Day 1970 I’ve never once thought about leaving Mary. She is my life. She is my soul mate. She is the yin to my yang and the whole would be irreparably damaged if taken apart. Some readers may already be ahead of me at this point in realizing that this is all testimony in praise of the one for whom all adjectives and superlatives fall short of sufficiently describing. I’m thinking that a relationship of such duration is worthy of at least a week’s worth of reflection, and so if this isn’t your cup of tea I suggest taking a week’s break and see if I have anything more worthwhile to think about next Monday.