Anniversary Thoughts

Last Thursday was our fourth wedding anniversary.  To me, anniversaries are like the melting clocks in Dali's "The Persistence of Memory".  On one hand, I can't believe we've been married four years already.  (I can't believe my age either -- my self-image is still stuck at college-age!)  On the other hand, it feels like we've been married forever.  We've shared so much together in those four years: new jobs, an apartment, a house, vacations, and a million little everyday moments.  Besides, we dated for four years before that and were friends for the previous year... so really, it's the eighth anniversary of our relationship and the ninth anniversary of our friendship.  No wonder four years seems short in a way, since we've really been together for twice that time!  Freshman engineering courses, meals at the dining hall, movies, marching band, mailing letters back and forth from Spain, planning the wedding, student teaching, searching for jobs... all those things are just as much a part of our relationship as the events of the past four years.

Thursday's dinner out was a perfect image of the fluid nature of the anniversary concept for us, which was at one of our favorite "nice" restaurants.  This happens to be the restaurant we went to for our first-ever Valentine's Day when we were dating (sophomore year of college).  Ryan didn't know where to take me, so he asked one of my friends, who asked her dad, who recommended this restaurant.  Who would have ever thought back then that we'd end up buying our first house five minutes away from it?  As we enjoyed our on-the-house dessert to celebrate our wedding anniversary, I could see shadows of those college kids we used to be out of the corner of my eye, giggling and shyly starting our lives together.  So I'm glad to celebrate our eighth year of sharing our lives with each other -- and our fourth year of doing so in an even closer way.