happy anniversary honey

There's a story behind this photo. It was taken on the night of our fourteen year wedding anniversary. Gary and I were headed out to a French restaurant in San Francisco that night, the babysitter had arrived, the kids were outside with her shooting baskets, we stood on the sidelines watching. All I wanted for our anniversary was a photo of us. But they kept turning out too stiff...and then we were postponing leaving and we had to catch a train, and I kept insisting on a photo. Then we laughed because we looked annoyed and stressed in the previous "happy anniversary" photos, and then we finally relaxed enough to get the perfect photo. Well perfect enough. To quote one of Gary's songs, "That's what they call a life."

You see I wanted to capture a photo that shows our love, our bond, our connection. After so many years there's been incredible joy and agonizing tears, there has been worries, big and small, and times of abundance and times of lack, and learning so many new things, reading Yogi Berra quotes and laughing so hard our stomachs hurt, the births of our children, and moving houses and packing boxes, and kids hating school and kids loving school and trying home school, our first Christmas and so many other holidays, visiting my grandpa in a nursing home with Gary and Grandpa not recognizing me, losing my grandmother who died at age 100, and who knew and loved my husband. We have had many friends, we have perfected a long menu of meals that we eat as a family. Gary has written books and songs, I have tried to write books, and made paintings, and gardens. Then we have admired each other's work. We have hosted concerts and parties, and made up scavenger hunts for our kids, we have had birthday celebrations and loved all of our nieces and nephews. We have enjoyed traveling with the kids but not enjoyed the long airplane rides, we have encouraged each other in all that we do.

After all of these years Gary is still my best friend, we laugh at the same things, we respect the same qualities in people, we have so much fun together, and we so enjoy our three children. It's easy in all consuming family life to take one's spouse for granted. I wanted that photo to remind me not to.

I love you G.

Here's to a great year. Fourteen is my lucky number.