February 8th, 2003…the night we got engaged. Three weeks after our first date. 🙂

October 18th, 2003 in Miller Park, Bloomington, Illinois.

One of our cruise adventures.

Happy Anniversary, Shug.  15 years of our journey together flooded my mind late last night, and for the first time in awhile, I wanted to get to some writing again, and I just wanted to catalog a few things…

We met and got engaged in 3 weeks. I mean, who does that? You could have been an ax-murderer and I wouldn’t have known yet…truth is, I just followed my intuition when you popped the question. I knew I wanted to spend my life with you, so why postpone any of the good stuff?  I didn’t actually know you terribly well (how can you in 3 weeks?)…but I figured I’d have the rest of my life to do that. I taught and coached high school and worked nights and weekends in a coffee shop, and you were working all kinds of crazy hours at Target, so our time together was any and all seconds in between; meanwhile, I hadn’t caught my family or friends up so 3 weeks and no warning? Obviously, everyone freaked out.

They said we wouldn’t make it. That we didn’t know what love is. We were too young. We didn’t have any money. We had our lovers and supporters too…baffled, but supportive and so excited for us. It’s a blur of both as I think back.  

Marrying you is the best thing I ever did. We say sometimes that “we married our best friend,” but that’s not really true. I didn’t know you well enough to say you were my best friend; you had a million of the qualities that make up the definition, but not enough time invested. Truth is, I fell in love with you, and you became my best friend. In a lot of ways, we “grew up” together, as we learned and changed a lot in our 20s. We consulted each other, and grew and changed enormously in our first decade or so.  I loved you from first words, but you became my best friend after doing life together and maneuvering all the things…good and bad.

It’s not like it’s always easy; we were two very different people jumping into a life together.

You’re a neat freak–like, you clean the counters three times every night before you can sleep well. And I actually enjoy clutter. It makes my heart happy.  Especially old farm trinkets that remind me of my parents or grandparents and have a good story. All the chicken candy dishes and Hodel’s Eggs envelope openers? Yes, please. Any old records or Rocke’s Honey paraphernalia? Yes, I’ll take all of it. You snore louder than all of the late night construction behind our house, and I have the worse night anxiety ever, so some nights, we’re a real hot mess just trying to get some rest (and we don’t even have kids). I have serious ADHD with home projects and will have 5 things started at once with no end in sight. (See my first point; this is not an easy tick to live with for someone who is a neat freak.)  I’m irrational with money–I’ll spend $300 on a spa visit but will almost only shop online consignment for clothes. You love a Nordstrom personal shopper, as if that’s what all the cool kids do. In spite of some of our differences and my ticks that drive you crazy, doing life with you feels like breathing.

Remember when we scrimped each month to have a $14 Chinese dinner at Oriental Kitchen in Auburn? When we had too much sun and too many cocktails at Caesar’s Palace and decided we should tattoo our wedding date in roman numerals? Or changed hotel rooms (and flights) 3 times to monopolize on free rooms in our favorite city? When we started a new adventure in San Antonio without knowing anyone…and had to rely on each other, almost solely? When your Dad died in Panama and we had to maneuver another country and try to figure out death certificates and legal docs in Spanish?  When you transferred back to Atlanta months before my teaching contract was up and we did long distance for a few months? When I broke my foot turning flips on a trampoline and 2 years later shattered my knee on a moped and you took care of me? (Summer of servitude part 1 and part 2.)

I never actually thought I’d get married–I never had the wedding day dreams of the perfect dress, flowers, and handsome groom. I just thought I’d be the cat-lady English teacher who got to go rogue in my single life and travel wherever I wanted–and I was pretty stoked about this idea when I left my hometown for Atlanta. While you hate cats and I gave up teaching 4 years ago, I still get to go rogue and travel wherever I want…with you by my side. How lucky am I?

It’s funny how life turns out in ways I could never have imagined, and I’ll never be more thankful than anything else in my life than our unexpected meeting, quick engagement, and long marriage.

You’ll always be “Mein Bestest Stuck.” (German for My Best Piece.)

XOXO