How time flies

My husband and I celebrated our 12th anniversary a couple weekends ago. We finally got a chance to get away from the kids for a while as well. We called up grandma and grandpa to see if they would take the kids for us so we could drive all the way to Spokane for an evening of dinner and each others company (with no kids!). Well grandma and grandpa, stilling having a life, had made plans for Saturday to go to my mom's sisters for the day (party and games I'm sure it was). But good for them, I'm glad my parents have never given up on life. So we agree that Sunday would be fine for us as well.

So Sunday we went to Clinkerdager's for dinner. Had I not had a gift certificate to cover our dinner I would never have gone there. Don't get me wrong I loved it the food was delicious and the view would have been beautiful if it hadn't already gotten dark, but they were so expensive. My pockets don't run that deep. James' plate was $27 alone. But it was great.

Anyway I enjoyed our anniversary. Sometimes I look back and think I don't feel that old, or look that old, so how can I have been married for so long? At times it feels like just yesterday that I married my high school sweetheart.

It was our junior year in high school, at Thomas Downey High in Modesto, CA. I was sitting in the library at school with a friend of mine. In walks this good looking kid wearing a cream and black sweater (which I think I still have) with shoulder length black hair. He walked up to my friend Sarah and they talked for a minute. I remember looking at him and wishing she would introduce us, but she didn't. When he left I slapped her. "Ouch what was that for," she said. "You didn't introduce me!" I replied.

I didn't see him again until the second semester when I got my schedule changed so I could be a teachers aid for a teacher I never had, but really liked her, Mrs Jackie Jones. I think of her quit often. She had a debilitating degeneration of her hips. I know the last time I went back to visit her she was no longer teaching. I hope she is doing well, because she is often in my thoughts. Anyway, I think she knew James and I were meant to be together. She never stopped us from spending time together, and even took pride in the fact that we meet in her class and later were married. Now I remember the last time I went to visit her was to introduce her to our little boy Christopher when he was a little baby. She would have loved to have meet him.

What I didn't know at the time was James had been putting himself in my path many times since our sophomore year, but I wouldn't give him the time of day that year. He finally talked to one of our other mutual friends and found out I didn't like ear rings, his holy shirts, or the long scraggly hair. So that morning when we meet in the library he had trimmed up his hair, lost the ear ring and was wearing that beautiful sweater. Then when I meet him again in Mrs Jones class I was so excited. We had many times to set and visit and get to know each other.

Then on Valentines Day that year he asked me out with a single rose set beautifully in a container with Baby's Breath. Of course I said yes. Our friends and teachers thought we were a perfect couple. It was my parents that we would have the rocky road with. But after I broke up with him twice (parental influence) we were engaged, and then of course I had to hand him back the ring once too, and then take it back and leave home for the weekend. Even my mother-in-law remembers the morning that I showed up to break up with him the last time. He was still in bed and I went in to give him the ring. I was too upset to talk so I just walked out and he went running up after me in his underwear. Talk about an embarrassing moment for mom. Eventually my parents learned to except that we were getting married weather they liked it or not.

A lot happened that year in 1993. I graduated a few days after going to my grandmother's funeral, and then James and I were married on the 12th of November that year.

I won't say it has been perfect or without our hard times, but we have always stuck together and listened to each other, talked out our problems, never fight in front of the kids, actually we rarely fight, and above all we always make up (that's the best part). I think what has made our marriage so strong is that we both have a great respect for each other, we are best friends, and great lovers.

I hope for many more great years.