Nineteen, I argued with Pretty last year, when we were out with our friends Francie and Nekki having dinner to celebrate our anniversary date: February 09th. Pretty shook her head so I persisted with well, we got together February 09, 2001, so that makes 2019 our nineteenth anniversary. At the moment I said those words, I knew I was wrong. Me, the math person in our family, had missed that number which any fool could see was eighteen.

So now I again say nineteen in 2020, and I feel confident I’m right.

February 09, 2001 – Cancun, Mexico

I look at this picture, see those smiling younger women having dinner at a restaurant in Mexico, and wonder if they had any inkling of the journey they started that weekend.  I think journeys weren’t even in their minds. I was trying so hard to impress Pretty I boldly poured the hottest salsa on my tacos which produced a heat surge not unlike a hot flash. I almost fainted.

Pretty on the other hand did as she has done for nineteeen years of my trying to impress her. She laughed. That laughter has sustained us through the roller coaster rides life brings to everyone who risks the journey.

Today we were driving to retrieve our pickup that was in the Dodge shop having airbags replaced. Our conversation focused on my cell phone which Pretty has disparaged from the time I purchased it a few months ago, a phone which I still can’t use properly. I told Pretty the problem was now compounded because I have lost the vision in my left eye (I’ll have laser surgery to correct shortly). Pretty who has an iPhone said, you have a funky phone because you refuse to pay for a good one. How could she help me if I didn’t have an iPhone. Point taken. Give me 48 hours to think about it. I love the 48 hours trick.

Conversation topics change over the course of a marriage, but for us Mexican food is still a comfort meal. I go easier on the salsa caliente, though.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning makes me wish I were a poet. “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways…I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach when feeling out of sight for the ends of being and ideal grace. I love thee to the level of every day’s most quiet need by sun and candlelight. I love thee freely, as men strive for right. I love thee purely, as they turn from praise. I love thee with the passion put to use in my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith. I love thee with a love I seemed to lose with my lost saints. I love thee with the breath, smiles, tears of all my life; and if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death.”

I love thee, Pretty.

Stay tuned.