The day-to-day stuff that makes a marriage

Today is our 33rd anniversary. We were married on June 6, 1992, nearly one-third of a century and six U.S. presidents ago.

Relationships, particularly marriages, are very much about such milestones, but you only have so many of these big moments along the way.

What you have a lot more of is the stuff of life. You get one honeymoon and several thousand trips to the grocery store. One wedding and countless trash pick-up days. One each of your silver and gold anniversaries, and many hundred times each of cutting the grass and going to your kids' sporting events and school concerts.

This is not at all to take the romance out of marriage. I've just found that the deepest connection comes from the shared experience of late-night newborn feedings, exhausting family vacations in the minivan, sitting together reading quietly in the living room, and working as a team to catch the little mouse your cats have cornered in the basement.

It's worried discussions over finances, small compromises that keep the peace, gently making fun of each others' little faults, and laughing way too hard at the dumb joke you asked Alexa to tell at bedtime, right before you turn out the lights and both fall asleep.

It's kids' drawings on the side of the fridge, dust balls in the corner of the kitchen no one has the energy to clean up, and going together to the vet to put down a beloved old pet who will never be healthy again.

It's all of that and many other things you won't find preserved in a scrapbook but that are the substance of a lifelong commitment.

Today that's what I celebrate. Not so much the fact that it happens to be exactly 33 years, but rather the often-forgotten but deeply valuable, minute-by-minute reality of life spent as a couple.

It's worth celebrating. Every bit of it.