December 19th, 2025

That's Tim and I doing our version of celebrating.  As of yesterday, Tim and I have been married for 32 years!  I am so impressed with us :)

We both agreed that those 32 years have flown by far too fast. 32 years seems like a really long time and I keep thinking I've done the math wrong.  Surely that much time hasn't actually passed, right? It's hard to believe!  Well maybe that's not entirely true.  It seems like both no time at all and always.

Which sounds confusing. Sorry.  Maybe I can explain it better?  I will try.

The disbelief at how much time has passed isn't really shocking.  I still cannot believe how dang old I am either.  When the heck did that happen?   My best guess on that score is that we are all so very busy all of the time that we, or at least I, haven't been very good at living in the moment, pausing to embrace and truly appreciate and absorb little slices of time and life.  Instead, I spent most years racing through, always falling behind and rushing to catch up and meanwhile, the years sped by. And each of those distant years feels like just yesterday.

Now that I am retired and have adjusted to being retired I have the luxury of time. I can look back and see with a great deal of regret, how many beautiful moments I wish I had forced myself to step back, take a breath or two and been really and truly present.  Moments with my parents and grandparents, now long gone, moments with the kids who are all doing wonderfully elsewhere, living their own amazing lives and even with Tim.  

Well l cannot go back in time to correct those things, and honestly, I'm not sure that I was capable back then of slowing down.  There was always such a frisson of desperation about me back then, a constant sense of urgency and yes, even fear.  I was always afraid that I was doing it (whatever I was currently doing) wrong, or at least, it could be done better; that I wasn't measuring up, that I was on the cusp of losing everything and everyone I loved with with one false move on my part everything would ...I don't know, explode?  Dissolve?  Discombobulate?

Of course I know better now.  That whole age and wisdom thing is sometimes correct.

I didn't realize back then that the perfection I was forever seeking, wasn't an action, it was a moment.  Perfection was hiding in the shadows on a hot  summer day, waiting with a cool lemonade and sweet smelling grass, calling me to sit a minute and relax.  The best moment wasn't laying awake in the night re-running the video tape in my  head reviewing everything I'd done and said, criticizing it and vowing to do better.  No, the best moment was quiet and still and standing back watching the kids play and laugh together; sitting smiling and happy beside Tim as he, with great animation, describes an idea he has been working on.  

But there are no re-do's and that's a dang shame mostly because it caused time to feel sped up and I suspect that I simply missed some great opportunities for perfect moments. Zooooom and it's gone, never to return.

On the other hand,  it also feels like forever in the way that standing on the shore, looking out over the ocean at the horizon line and it feels like you are gazing at forever; standing atop  Mount Evans or Pike's Peak looking over a sea of other Mountain Tops that seem to be eternal; the way the Niagara River continues to fall in an unending crash of water seeming without end.  As if Tim and I were always side by side, and always would be, until at least 3 days after the end of time.

There is a level of understanding between us that has linked us together, unquestioningly.  There is so much uncertainty in the world and in life, thank goodness we have a rock solid connection between us. Maybe had already been written in the Big Book of Destiny.   Who is to say, certainly not me.  All I can tell you is that if it's true that we live multiple lives, I believe that Tim and I were together in all of them.  And that sounds like forever to me.

I waxed philosophical, my apologies.

The point was, Happy 32nd Anniversary to us :)

​Happy Weekend ya'll