I’m already the sort who cries easily. I don’t just mean at the parts of movies where you’re supposed to cry. I’ll cry at the beautiful parts. I’ll cry reading about tragic events. I’ll tear up with pride for my kids' achievements. Twenty years ago I absolutely sobbed with joy after saying “I do” to Valerie on our wedding day.
We were married pretty young; on the doorstep of turning 23 and having each only just graduated from college. But we had already dated for over three years, so we went for it anyway. Marriage, if you choose it, is hard. And I wouldn’t recommend my own kids marry young. I certainly wouldn’t presume to use my marriage as an example for anybody else on “how to make things work”, but it has (mostly) worked for us, and I’m grateful.
Part of what, I believe, helped our partnership was spending most of the first nine years without kids. We certainly love our two children, but having all that time as husband and wife while we finished growing up (yeah, right) did a lot of work to cement our relationship before we had to be mom and dad. We travelled, we dined out too much, stayed up late, and gradually became just mature enough to consider having kids.
Every day since we stood at the altar has been a choice to stay together. A choice to make the best of what we have, even when we sometimes had the worst of each other. Each of us has grown and changed in ways that we could not have imagined, and each of us continues some of our bad habits that have grated since day one. But we still choose each other. I’m hopeful we’ll choose each other for at least another twenty years.
I love you Valerie :-D