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.

32 years later, here we are

 

This shot was taken many years after we were married, but it was a re-creation of a photo we took on our honeymoon in 1992 at Universal Studios in Florida.

This post should technically appear here on the blog tomorrow, seeing as how Terry and I celebrate our 32nd wedding anniversary on June 6th and not today. But my Monday-Wednesday-Friday posting schedule yields to no milestone or special occasion, thus making me 24 hours early in wishing my bride a very happy anniversary.

However long you've been married, you can't help but notice, as the number creeps higher and higher, that the years pass impossibly fast. Father Time is, without a doubt, undefeated.

And he's running up the score on some of us.

I am grateful for everything and everyone I have in my life, but my wife is at the top of that list. I don't necessarily deserve someone as wonderful as she is, but I take some small amount of credit for recognizing that fact and being grateful for her.

Thirty-two years ago tonight we had our wedding rehearsal and rehearsal dinner. I look back at those grainy old videos and realize we were just kids at the time. I was 22 years old, having only graduated from college a few weeks earlier. Terry was 23.

And here we are now, somewhat older than 22 and 23.

Our kids marvel at the fact that we were married so young, and even more so at the fact we were the parents of three children before either of us had turned 30.

It was a different time. Everyone lives life in their own way and at their own pace.

Our chosen pace, in those early years, was "frantic."

As I type this in mid-May, I have no idea what Terry and I will do tomorrow night to mark the passing of 32 years. Probably dinner out and an early return home to watch TV. (EDITOR'S NOTE: It turns out we'll be attending a playoff hockey game...at the insistence of my awesome wife.)

Happy anniversary to the best wife a guy could ask for. Without her, this blog could only be called "5 Kids," and well, that just wouldn't be as exciting.

This is what we looked like on June 6, 1992

My wife and I were married 29 years ago today. It was a Saturday, and while it looked like it was going to rain, we got away with pretty good weather for the whole shindig.

I have written about our anniversary at least three times in the history of this blog, so I'm not sure there's anything new to say. Those prior anniversary posts can be read here (2012), here (2015), and here (2017).

Life goes on, and we go on. That's not something to be taken lightly or for granted, though sometimes in the everyday grind we do lose sight of the things that are most valuable in our lives.

And that's all I have to say about that. Happy anniversary to the best wife a guy could ask for.

Reflections of a man who has somehow been married for 25 years

There are two amazing things about the fact that my 25th wedding anniversary is coming up in a few days:

   (1) Twenty-five years is a long time. I can't believe it has been 25 years.
   (2) Even after that quarter-century, every morning I wake up and look to my left and my wife is still there.

If I were in her shoes, I might have bolted by now.

Well, not really.

I think.

I mean, my general impression these past 2½ decades has been that she is as happy with the overall state of things as I am. As far as I can tell, she's as much with the program as me.

But then, I know myself. And honestly, I would probably get a little irritated living with me every day. I'm very well-intentioned – maybe too much so. I suspect my constant earnest attempts at being agreeable could verge on "grating" from time to time.

So occasionally I worry she'll wake up herself one day, look to her right, see me there, and it will finally dawn on her that maybe she married down. Or at least that she just didn't make the best long-term choice when she married at the age of 23.

And then suddenly that space to my left will be empty.

Which, OK, is a stupid way to think. You don't live life in fear of "what if." You live in celebration of "what is."

And "what is" is pretty darn good, let me tell you.

I have said this before but it bears repeating, and I've always meant it in all sincerity: I won the Matrimonial Lotto. And I did it at the age of 16. That's when this wonderful woman and I first got together.

At the time, of course, I had no idea we would get to this point. I only knew that this pretty girl had decided that maybe I was sufficiently presentable to go out with, which was more than enough to make my clueless 16-year-old self happy.

And I've pretty much stayed that way ever since: happy.

I complain, of course, because that's what we do as human beings. No matter how good we've got it, there's a part of us that wants to complain about something. Anything, really. It just makes us feel better, I guess?

But when it comes down to it, I have no room to complain. I am wildly and undeservedly blessed, and it starts with the woman on the other side of that bed.

I have, in the wise words of Stevie Nicks, built my life around her. At some point I figured out she was a person worth doubling down on, so I did.

And the payoff has been, by all accounts, tremendous.

My wife is my best friend. She is beautiful both inside and out. She is funny (something that took her years to realize about herself), smart, loving, loyal, dedicated and an absolute joy to be around.

I don't just say these things because it happens to be a milestone anniversary for us, or because tonight we're having a blowout party in our backyard to which absolutely anyone who reads this is invited. I say them because they are true, and because in saying them, I force myself to realize the true meaning of "grace" in my life. God has given her to me not because I "earned" such a blessing, but pretty much just because He loves me despite the fact that I'm a big giant goof.

So today I celebrate all that is right with my life – which is to say, just about everything – and it starts with the beautiful young woman in the white dress who said "I do" 25 years ago.

That was one giant risk she took, and I only hope I can supply some small return on her investment of trust in me.

23 years and counting with Terry

My wife started out beautiful. And now in her mid-40's, she has moved on to "hot."

This is the mother of all mixed blessings for me. Any guy wants to be married to "hot," but it also puts pressure on you to try and match your wife's hotness, which I honestly cannot do.

So I try to make up for it by earning money to support our family and occasionally writing nice, heartfelt things about her.

This blog post, for the record, is the latter.

Tomorrow is our 23rd wedding anniversary. We're just two years away from our silver anniversary, which is funny in that:

• It feels like we got married two weeks ago. I'm not quite sure how we got here so fast.
• I remember my own parents' silver wedding anniversary, and man, they seemed a lot older to me then than I feel now.

But 23 years it has been, and every June 6th I give her credit for having stuck it out.

Terry knew I wasn't very handy when we got married, but at some point in the months after our wedding when we were living in our first house, I'm sure she thought, "Oh, you were serious about that not-being-able-to-fix-stuff thing? Like, really serious? I didn't know it was going to be this bad."

And so she has become quite the handy-woman, with occasional and greatly appreciated assistance from her father, the saint-like Tom Ross.

She is also chief cook and bottle washer, head homework helper, vice president of interior design, and director of finances, and she holds a myriad of other positions (all unpaid) around our house.

I have invested my life in her because I figured it was about the safest bet I could make, and for once it turns out I was right.

For the remainder of my days, I will go where she goes, I will essentially do whatever she tells me to do, and I will continue to stare at her sometimes with the vague expression of a guy who can't believe his own dumb luck and realizes he has most definitely outkicked his coverage (click on that link if you're unfamiliar with the expression).

Happy 23rd anniversary to my hot wife, whom I'm hoping can get around to tightening the faucet in the downstairs bathroom sometime this week because it's loose again...

To my wife on our 20th anniversary

Dear Terry,

Twenty years ago today we were married. Can you believe that? I can't even remember what I did yesterday, but I clearly recall June 6, 1992. It was one of the greatest days of my life (and is still the most fun I've ever had at a wedding reception).

After 7,305 days of marriage, there are two things I can say for sure:

(1) You've somehow managed to become even more beautiful.
(2) I haven't.

I know you don't think you're especially pretty these days because you're a mom, and moms as a rule don't have very strong egos. But sometimes I look at you from across the room and my heart does that little skip-a-beat thing it used to do when we were first dating. How is it that you never seem to catch me staring?

I guess our marriage, like anyone else's, has had its share of ups and downs. But for the life of me, as I sit here and try to think of the downs, I'm coming up empty. Lots of ups. Lots and LOTS of ups. But downs? I seriously can't list any.

The only bad part about that is I start to take it all for granted. I assume that's the way it's always going to be, and maybe it will. But you should never take God's blessings for granted. And you, Mrs. Tennant, are definitely a blessing from above.

I appreciate that you've put up with me for so many years. I'm not much at fixing stuff. Nor am I generally a willing yardwork partner. And as hard as I've tried, I haven't been able to earn enough money to make us independently wealthy yet. But on the plus side, I can punctuate a sentence for you and wash your kitchen floor...and I think there's something to be said for both of those things.

Did you know the symbol for your 20th anniversary is China (the dinnerware, not the country)? I didn't. But it reminded me of all the effort I expended trying to convince you that "Frost White" was the dish pattern we should go with: simple, elegant, pure white. But you said no. I think you probably made the right call there.

Anyway, in the midst of all the chaos that comes with keeping a family of seven fed, clothed and generally happy, I thought I should at least take five minutes out of our crazy day to let you know how much I appreciate you. And how much I hope for 20 (or 40...or 60) more great years together with you. We should all be so blessed.

Happy anniversary, honey.

Love,
Scotto