35 years!

This Saturday my husband Bill and I will celebrate 35 years of marriage. Thirty-five! It blows my mind, really. As I thought about all these years, and since I'm a photo freak, I began digging. Through photos and through my mind and heart. Here goes, from the beginning.

Bill and I dated for over four years before we married. Not because I wasn't sure about marriage, but because I was in college and my parents would stop payments if I married. "You'll be a grown, independent woman then," my dad said. Not that he wasn't ready to cut the apron strings, quite the opposite. With Dad, when you leave the nest, you fly. I also loved college life and wanted to complete that. So we dated and waited.

It's lame, but here's our wedding "portrait." We were married at a courthouse in August 1978 with no family in attendance. Would I do it differently? Yes, I sure would. But I had a job waiting in Florida and we didn't have much time to get our stuff together and move. So we got hitched. That's that.

The quality of this photo is awful, but I love it for the memory. We were on a drift boat off the coast of Lake Worth, Florida, the sweet little town where we spent our first five years of marriage. We went on a fishing trip on a Saturday and I got seasick, but it was one of those fun, early-marriage experiences I treasure. Almost everything was different in south Florida: the weather of course, living by the ocean, the rustling palmetto outside our bedroom window, getting rock shrimp for dinner fresh off the boats, year-round warmth for jogging, swimming, beaching, biking, you name it. And we were doing it together, in love, starting out our lives. I worked a job I loved, Bill did various jobs, and we lived in our little Lake Worth house for five years, with its wood floors and pool and orange tree. I had a lot to learn about being a wife. I was way too focused on myself first. I didn't know God. I loved Bill and somehow, thankfully, he loved me through my time of growing. 

In 1983 we became parents and life changed completely and wonderfully.

October, 1983: David makes three.

That's a quick summary of our first five years. See ya tomorrow!