Twenty Freakin Years!

I’ve been told that you can’t write about something that you don’t know.  The one thing that I  know completely is love. Almost twenty years ago, just ten more days in fact, I will have been married to Jason, the most amazing compassionate teddy bear of a great big man that I have ever met.  Sometimes I look back on our life and I smile other times I admit I cry a little, because you see, when you have something as amazing as I have part of you is always afraid of losing it.  I just finished reading a book, something that I used to always do but haven’t taken the time to do in quite a while.  It was ridiculously long and endlessly slow but something about it was so beautiful that I couldn’t put it down.  “The Shoemaker’s Wife,” is all about love and loss and part of me when it ended at her husband’s death knew that I would feel just as she did if my Jason every passed away, completely happy in the world and desperately lonely in her big bed at night.

I have a special gift about me.  Somehow I can most often find happiness.  Sometimes the world is hard and I want to cry but somewhere happiness always seems to hold me.  Tomorrow if my perfect little piece of heaven ended I would still find happiness, but I know part of me would be looking through the world in a big bubble, enjoying my time, my children, my God, but always holding on to the time that our eternity would begin.

You see, this is why I don’t read sad books or watch sad movies.  If a character that I will love in them is going to die I cannot read them or watch them because they haunt me for weeks and as my Jenny would say put me into a little bit of a depression.  I think perhaps this is the writer side of me, I imagine everything the whole world as it may be as if it were happening to me.  So if you kill off a beloved character most certainly something of the same sort will happen to my own life.  Hence, the pining away I have for Jason right at this moment who happens to be away at Graduation for the college that he works for.

Last Saturday Jason and I left for California for a few days of alone time.  Youth Conference which we both are going to would interrupt our Anniversary week and the rest of the summer just gets busier so we took the time at the beginning of the month.  It was glorious and well earned.  Twenty years after all is definitely something to celebrate.

Let me paint you a sweet little picture of my married life.  Imagine a girl, now of course she has to be beautiful because that’s how all stories should be, who grew up her whole life dreaming about fairy tales.  Now imagine if everything that little girl could possibly dream could actually come true, because you see one of the best things about that girl is that she can imagine anything into reality.  That little girl was me.  Now, I’m not so sure if I was beautiful, but in my memories I make certain that I am and Jason, well you see he is that prince that shows up in every fairy tale to tell the little girl just how beautiful that she is.  And his arms really are stronger than anyone else’s and he really does protect me and fill my world with wonderful amazing things and bring me more joy than anyone should ever be allowed to have and could ever possible contain.  Every time that he looks at me I am Cinderella, or Belle, or Sleeping Beauty and I really am the most amazing person that anyone has ever seen because even after twenty years he still looks at me that way and somehow, despite the ancient thirty eight years that my kids think I carry I still feel young and light and like anything is possible because I have him, and our California trip only reminded me of that even more.

Our two oldest daughters, Jenny and Nan, have a cute little tradition that they started a few years ago.  Every time that they go anywhere and they see a statue of a big animal we have to stop the car and let them get out to take a picture of it with them next to it and of course every trip they are hoping to top the last one in what animal they might find.  So imagine our delight when just a few miles away we found a metal statue of a great big dinosaur.  Ha!  Top that Jenny and Nan.  Of course the next day we found a few more and had to send them some awesome pictures of just how brilliant their parents were, because we are.

 

 

 

 

 

Ah…California was…well…freaking awesome, and twenty years really is freakin amazing and I am looking forward to another freakin ridiculous twenty years more.

 

 

So of course Jason, the av/computer/d.j. guy that he is had is go pro camera on his head at absolutely the most perfect time on our vacation and got a glorious shot of my bodacious wipeout.  The waves were amazing that day and my body a little battered and bruised for it all, but heck, it was righteous dude!!