On this day in history...

When I was in junior high and high school, I was one of those girls who marked every significant (or insignificant, for that matter) moment either in my journal or on my calendar.  To this day, I can tell you the birthdays of people I haven't seen in 20 years as well as various other blips on the radar of a lifetime.  I don't know if I owe this quirk to my Papa, who would start every story with something to the effect of, "Back on July 15, 1937..." or to my mom. 

A few years ago I decided to make my parents a calendar using family pictures, and in the process I snuck Mom's calendar off the wall and wrote down all the dates that were important to her.   Let me just say that there are LOTS of dates that are important to her.  If you've crossed her path more than once, you're probably on the calendar.  Deaths, births, anniversaries, firsts...they are all on there.  Sometimes I wonder why she puts some things on there. Other times, I get it.

At some point after high school, I stopped marking my calendar.  I don't know if I just got too busy or just found fewer things worth commemorating, but I stopped.  I still kept a journal, but with less frequency and enthusiasm. I did start journaling again when I met Kevin.  And although I can't tell you the exact date, I know it was the first day of inservice, 2002.  What I realized with him was that it isn't the date that matters. It's the moments.  Like how on my birthday, only a week or so after our first date, he brought me my very own birthday cake.  Or how after he met my parents for the first time, we drove up to the spot where as a kid I wanted to build my house, and he thought it was as amazing as I did.  Or how he would leave little Post-It notes in my make-up drawer so I would find them in the morning when he wasn't there.

Or how, on November 15, 2003, he proposed to me under the stars, surrounded by candles, in the middle of the North Meadow.  How he read a letter to me that he'd written years before we met...to me..to his future wife. How my entire life changed in that one moment, because from that point on, I had a partner to walk with me.  No matter what, I would never be alone.  No matter what, I would be loved.  No matter what.

So to my husband on this day in our history:  I love you.  More today than that day way back when.  Life isn't always sexy or pretty or even fun...but I'm always glad to be on this adventure with you.  I'm so glad you asked me to join you!