Memories

62 years! Can that possibly be right?! Can we possibly have been married so long?

We went from “Stop that, my Mom is watching!” to “Stop that, the grandkids are staring!” seemingly in the blink of an eye.

Wasn’t it just a week ago we were rebelliously disagreeing with all the old fogy adults warning us we were too young to know what we wanted? Ignoring dire warnings that we never “Make It?”

I can still feel my knees actually knocking and see my hand shaking so badly it took three tries to insert the dime in the payphone. My mothers “You did what!” reaction to the news of our elopement became the fodder of family jokes…many years later.

The two kids that set up housekeeping and had to burn a lifetime collection of magazines of a particular nature when they discovered love isn’t all you need, continue to surface even now, hand in hand. Was this “Making It?”

Bringing our precious firstborn home is burned so indelibly in our brains and hearts it must have happened just weeks ago. The sheer terror felt at the realization we were totally alone with this beautiful bundle of colic would have been overwhelming had we not had each other. Would we “Make It?”

First days of school turned into high school graduations, jobs turned into careers, thick black hair turned silver, and still we had each other. “Making It?”

Alone again at last, sharing tears the day we moved from the only house our children knew…together still. “Making It?”

Holding on to each other (or bracing each other, depending on point of view) as first children, then grandchildren make our home a temporary port in their personal storms we wonder are we “Making It?”

Gathering the clan as often as we can, we exchange glimpses and grins as he stops to hold the door for me while running (more like hobbling-still nursing a broken hip) after a giggling young man clutching tightly to Grandpa’s hat as he tries to make chubby little year old legs run away.

We might just “Make It” after all!  Happy anniversary Tommy…I love you