On November 21, 2021, David and I were in San Diego, waiting for our dinner reservation at the Hotel Del Coronado. We found a bench on the beach and sat, facing west, enjoying the sunset. A woman came from the condo behind us and told us she and her friends were watching us. We looked so sweet together, she said, they captured the moment. She showed us the pictures she had taken.
As we visited, we told her we were there to celebrate our twenty-fifth anniversary. When she smiled and congratulated us, we confessed we had only been married twenty-five months, not years. We took such delight in our good fortune in finding each other, we marked every month, and sometimes every day, as a celebration. We still do. Our morning routine involves sitting an hour or longer with our coffee, enjoying the birds feeding on our deck, discussing our day’s plans, and often commenting on our delight.
In 2017, we both lost our spouses. Dave’s wife died of cancer after forty-six years of marriage. I was married to Larry for thirty-four. Unless we both survive into our nineties, it is unlikely we will come close to those records. We are realistic and grateful as we count each day. Although one of us is more optimistic than the other, we hope for at least another decade together. We have grandchildren yet to be launched into adulthood, and unborn great grandchildren yet to welcome into the world–not to mention unwritten books or unfinished quilts.
Saturday, we celebrate sixty months of married life. We have fit in as many adventures as possible in the time we have had. Considering our stay-at-home months during COVID while we recovered from knee surgery (mine) and I discovered the joys of marrying a man who likes to cook, we have traveled (visiting National Parks, five foreign countries, at least fifteen states, and as many quilt shops as I can find) and built a beach cottage. We have navigated a Cancer journey (Dave, recovering well from proton beam radiation of his prostate). I have rediscovered the brightness of the world after Cataract Surgery. We have graduated four grandchildren, and celebrated one Quincenera. We have attended baseball and soccer and basketball games, applauded at school band and orchestra concerts. We have created new traditions and negotiated family holidays. We laugh together every day.
We will celebrate our fifth year of marriage by flying to Switzerland and adding four more foreign countries to our life-together list. Although we share separate memories of certain places, we frequently remind each other that this time is our time and our first time together.
We are delighted to embrace the somewhat cliched sentiment, without doubt: “We are living our best life.”
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