22 years with The Man of My Dreams

Marriage, that blessed event, that dream within a dream, when love, true love, will follow you forever. The Princess Bride, William Goldman.

true love shows up everywhere.

Today I celebrate 22 years of marriage to The Man of My Dreams.  Yes, my friend Elizabeth coined that phrase when I was dating him.  I happily adopted it using it at first as a fun phrase to replace the worn out “boyfriend” or later “husband” when introducing him to friends.  It stuck and through the hills and valleys and fog and thunderstorms of our lives together it remains the root of my feelings for him.

All true love has great ups and downs and in-betweens.  Ours is no different. We’ve held each other through so much.  He has loved my sons as his own.  And we all held onto love as our daughter decided to emerge into the world 6 weeks early.  We moved into our new home and merged as a family.  Our youngest joined us 13 months later.  Perfect. 

Our life was baseball and herb gardens and swimming and school.  New friends, coffee talks and walking.  Block parties, puppies and birthday parties.  Annual honeymoon trips to San Francisco, Monterey, and North Lake Tahoe and frequent “special dinners”, and hot dates kept passion and love growing solidly between us.  We walked with friends going through cancer, saw others transferred out of town and one more health challenge for me.  We were happily riding the rhythms of life.

In 1992, while having a skier’s breakfast at a café on the shore of North Lake Tahoe, (I was eating something new to me…muesli. YUM!)  we sat watching big, fat flakes of snow float down from the sky.

 Jim said, “Wouldn’t it be great if we could wake up to this every day?”

Well of course I said yes…so the journey to a land of four seasons began.  A year and a half later, we had sold our house and moved across the country to Montana.  The world opened wide for all of us.  New beginnings.  Self employment, adapting to new lifestyle, finding new community and enjoying living where vacation is right out the front door.  One year for our anniversary, Jim booked a private cabin on the overnight train to Seattle; we spent the day there and enjoyed another long train ride home. So romantic. 

For our tenth anniversary, we invited our community of friends together around us in celebration of true love. I surprised Jim with bagpipes playing as I walked to meet him at the altar. We asked our friends to write their thoughts of love on handmade papers that I still read today. Knowing the children were in the loving capable care of dear friends, we hopped a train to Seattle, then a plane to Victoria for a long weekend. Romantic, wonderful, magical.  More in love than ever.

The years since then have been full, too full sometimes, wrought with hard decisions, heart wrenching goodbyes and new opportunities. Landing in the Midwest nine years ago was a major hiccup for me. Jim has stayed the course through the laundry list of transitions since our arrival here.  One never knows when looking back how things might have been.  What if we could have stayed in Montana? I believe that our journeys stretch before us and we get to choose the turns and tools and transportation that take us to the destination. Like in the movie, Sliding Doors, the parallel journeys were completely different, and the destination was the same.  We have had many moments we could stand and look and say, wow, we would have been right here anyway! And this journey was so much more fun!

Five years ago on our anniversary, we were climbing the waves of rocks in Zion National Park. Five days in the wilderness together completely out of life as usual gave us the needed time to renew and reconnect.  Little did we know that the perfect storm was brewing, one that would test every level of our relationship.

Six weeks later we were waltzing with cancer.  Diagnosis, research, decisions, how do we tell the kids? An amazing amount of support came forth from our community here and afar. Cancer was like a rough fingernail snagging the fabric of our relationship. Threads pulled up to be tied off, rewoven or cut out altogether.  It was not pretty sometimes.  And other times it was so tender, so strong, a tendril that lead us through the darkest of times and inspired celebration at the mileposts.

 That August Jim took the children to visit his family in Houston.  At that time I was having weekly chemo, so I stayed home. On the anniversary of the day we met, I lay hooked to my I. V. tree missing him. Down in Houston, with camera in hand, he drove all over the city to take photos of the place we met, our old house, and places we had fun. When they got home, he gifted me with a beautiful story book of photos and memories of our early years together.  This beautiful creation touched me so. It added another thread to the underlying web of strength holding fast the tapestry of our relationship.

We worked through the depths of that year with help and love and dedication. Some shadows still linger.  Part of true love is walking in the shadows together, having the courage to find the light, shining it brightly to reveal a new level of relationship.  Five years out, we celebrate wellness.

We are in our house for one year this anniversary.  And it brings the reality of empty nesting home to roost.   We have seen four wonderful children blossom into fantastic adults. My wish for them is to follow their hearts, to do what they love and be happy, to think outside the box and trust their inner guidance, and to learn from the lessons of their parents.  I am so proud of each of them and I miss them so much!  I ask myself, what traditions do we cultivate to keep our family connected?

Is an empty nest really empty?  I think I would rather call it a LOVE NEST.  Empty nest sounds devoid of joy and purpose.  This phase of life brings lots of new emotions and new energy to play with. We get to create a new life together. We have never been a couple without children.  So what does that look like for us? Where will this path lead? What stokes the fires at this time in our lives? How do we care for each other without parenting each other? Jim has surprised me with expressing interest in how we feather our nest. It makes me ask, how have I changed? How has our idea of relationship changed? All new territory!

Jim has been holding the kite string to my kite all of these years. To his quiet and steady demeanor, I think I provide great entertainment value. On the surface, opposites that keep things interesting for one another. Within, soul mates that share common threads of truth, beauty, adventure, loyalty, community and love.  We are compliments. True love. It is organic and living and flourishing. Passing the test of time.

Trailmates...

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