2009 . . . Happy 12th Night! Happy 25th to Us!

25 years ago yesterday, I got married, saving my long-time love, Ronnie Blackwell. And he married me, too, and saved me right back! Today, I am still grateful that it was him who found me, who settled on me, who gathered me into his fold and made me his own (and vice versa!). Ok, yes, there are days I want to strangle him! Sometimes more than a day at a time! But, generally, we are looking in the same direction, making progress on the vision, looking through the same colored glasses, holding hands and crossing roads together, and still sharing nap mats and juice boxes.

This week was a big one in terms of anniversaries for us, as Ronnie also celebrated his first anniversary with the Sun Herald as their “birding columnist.” Of course, he celebrated by NOT having a column in Sunday’s paper; apparently, mailboxes filled and his article never got received by the editors. But, we’ll all overlook that little incident and keep plugging along…he is already at work on this week’s articles.

And, of course, this week is bittersweet for me as it is the first anniversary of my brother’s death…a whole year. Unbelievable still that he is gone from my life forever. I can only guess what it must be like for his wife and Christopher…still have not had the heart to bring myself back to family photos to do a collection for Chris….maybe this year for his birthday…

People keep asking me what we’re “doing” to mark the big anniversary. What does one DO? It just IS…another day, another piece of the cake, another experience…of course, it is significant that we’ve managed to string together enough bites of life to add up to 25 YEARS, but we just don’t have any big plans. Dinner with family/friends, a good bottle of wine, a cake shared with friends on Thursday night, we’ll probably take a picture (oops! we did!), and then we’ll just go on with our lives, stringing together more days, more bites of life, and see where those take us. It is a good ride.