I Do

still love this man!!!

9,857++ yesterdays ago, (27 years) we stood before God and family and friends and promised to love each other forever. No matter what.  I hope we have at least that many tomorrows.

It all started the summer after 6th Grade. This kid with wavy blonde hair and a reckless sparkle in his green eyes wooed me across the churchyard lawn at vacation Bible school when he yelled "Red Rover, Red Rover! Send Tina right over!" I ran toward him. I know there were others holding hands tightly in that line, but I didn't see them. I fell across his arm and it held. I wonder if all the angels in heaven smiled knowingly at that moment, as if everything was going according to some divine plan.

Our first date was a little over a year later. (I know, so young!) I wasn't quite fourteen. Neither of us was old enough to drive so we had to double date with someone who could. It happens that Hubby's good older friend asked my cousin out, so we all went together. My dad was not at all happy about this arrangement. When my first date came nervously into the front entry that September evening,  he slammed the bedroom door so hard that all the pictures fell off the wall. Yikes.

The four of us rode together in Terry's tan/brown '68 Chevy pickup to a small local bowling alley. My cousin and I wore fresh curls in our permed hair and probably some extra-shiny lip gloss. I remember that my date smelled of Irish Spring soap and a heavy cologne,  wore his hair parted down the middle and white carpenter pants. It was 1980.

I had never been bowling in my life. My first date bowled on a league. I remember being so nervous. I think he was nervous, too. He confidently stepped out on the wooden alley floor, propped the bowling ball in his hands, and with his eye on the pins, swung the ball behind him. As he brought the ball forward, his foot slid over the line and a loud buzzer rang, the ball stuck momentarily to his thumb, went straight up in the air and landed with a loud thud. Whew. So that's how you do it! :o) My cousin had  nearly the same experience as she took her turn. When she brought the ball back, it fell from her hand and rolled backwards. My first attempt sent the ball straight to the gutter. I threw a gutter ball in every frame but two. That score sheet holds the first page of a scrapbook, titled "first date". My score was 31 and his was 102.  I don't remember a whole lot more about the rest of that first date, but I knew I was in love!!

A few years later when this hunky blonde got his driver's license, he bought a black Ranchero from my dad who owned a used car lot in town at the time. It didn't matter if we kept the windows up or down when driving  those country gravel roads because it was so rusted behind the seat that the dust rolled fiercely in behind us and filled the car anyway. My dad was beginning to like him now.

Young love comes with it's trials and heartaches, but my junior year of high school, I proudly wore his class ring wrapped in dark blue yarn and never took it off. When he left for tech school the fall of my senior year, he promised me we would be together and gave me a promise ring to remind me.

 Oh, most people said we were too young. We didn't listen. We were engaged at Christmas.

I graduated in May and we were married in August. My mom told me I better be good to him because if we ever divorced she would have a hard time choosing sides.

She won't have to. 

So married life is good. Our dates have changed. We don't have to worry about a driver but we do have to make arrangements with a babysitter. We don't go bowling as often but I still throw a good gutter-ball. I've lost the shiny lip gloss and Hubby lost his wavy locks.

We've been through our own ups and downs. Sunshine and rain. Skinny clothes and fat clothes.Sports cars and mini-vans. Old houses and new houses. That reckless sparkle isn't quite as reckless as it once was, but I do catch a glimpse now and then.

Happy Anniversary to my Hubby.
Happy Anniversary, Hon.