Fourteen years

The night before, the fire alarm went off four times at the hotel where we were staying, so I finally gave up and went to her condo and slept on the couch.

I was a single man when I got up. After that, we spent most of the day apart, meeting at the church when she walked down the aisle. Then we went through a wedding ceremony that neigher of us particularly remembers, got in a limo that got lost on the way to the reception, then finally, went to the best party I've even been to. I wound up dancing on the tables to AC/DC.

When I finally went to bed that night--actually early the next morning--I wasn't single any more. My wife and I got up, said good bye, and took off through a low, smothering overcast to go to Disney World. The first time I said "my wife" the words almost didn't make it out of my mouth, they sounded so odd.

May 16, 1992.

Fourteen years later, I still don't know why she has stayed with me. It doesn't make any sense. But she has. For fourteen years, she has been mine. And for fourteen years, I have been the luckiest man on the face of the earth (with apologies to Lou Gehrig and Gary Cooper).

There aren't going to be any parties or DJs or drunken grooms dancing on the table tomorrow. I'll take my daughter down the street where she'll get her ride to school, then go to the podiatrist to get my Planter's Faciaitis dealt with. She'll go to school and serve lunch to a bunch of elementary school kids. Then I'll take my daughter to synchro practice and get home at 8:30 and we'll both be asleep by a little after 10:30.

The first few years were awfully tough. I'd like to think it's better now. Either way, I've gotten way more than I deserve for the last 14 years.