Decades (two so far)

For a while, I remembered the first time I said “ten years ago”. It was remarkable. Up until that point, ten years was an eternity, unfathomable, an entire lifetime. By now, though, the memory has faded to a faint hint of that youthful surprise-a memory of a memory. Now, as I stand upon the brink of our 20th wedding anniversary, I realize how little time that is. Not a lifetime, but a fraction of a lifetime if everything goes well.

To happen upon this day as if it were just another gorgeous October day, and find myself pleasantly surprised to run into an anniversary of some significance, is not nothing. Though I suppose we’ll treat it mostly as such. This is not a lament-no-but an acknowledgement of how we got here in the first place: each day skipping along merrily following the day before, rendering each other indistinguishable, until surprise, (!), you arrive at day 7,300 with no fanfare, no grand entrance.

Day 7300 will melt into day 7301 ad infinitum and one day we’ll be pleasantly surprised to have stepped into the 10,950th day and maybe we’ll pause a moment and look at each other, nod in acknowledgement before walking (or hopefully paddling) into another decade together. Because once you’ve gone this far, you measure things in decades. Decades of thousands of insignificant days punctuated by a few significant memories, and too many stories to recount.