Our 16th Wedding Anniversary

I know some of you have heard this before, but it is my tribute to our anniversary!

I met David while I was a bartender. I bartended for about two years and loved it. Playing shrink without a license was something I enjoyed as well. I had been dating the owner of the bar for about a year at the time I met David. The bar was sold not too long after I started working there.

One night while I was working, David and an old girlfriend came in. They didn't sit at the bar. They took a booth. They nursed their beers, so it was not a pain to wait on them. My bar was pretty full and I was busy. At one point I heard David talking about getting in there and working with his hands. I asked him if he was a surgeon. He told me no, he was a lawyer and gave me his card. I put it on the back on the bar and didn't think much more about it.

I had just turned 30 the month before I met him. I had never been married, although, I did live with a man for many years and we had been done for a couple of years by the time I took the bartending gig. There were lots of reports of a woman's chances of getting married at 30 were about as good as getting struck by lightening! I was not fretting about that. I was having a really good time.

That night was the night before Thanksgiving and I was looking forward to the next day off. As David and his friend were leaving the bar, he made a turkey with his two hands and it made me laugh.

The day after Thanksgiving, I was back at the bar. David came back. He was alone and he sat at the bar. He charmed me with his stories and jokes. He asked me out and I told him I was dating somebody and would have to let him know. The next day, I told the man I was dating that I had met somebody I wanted to go out with. We broke up. It was not a bad break up, but I really wanted to go out with David.

We dated and saw each other almost daily. He had taken me to his house and it was lovely, sparsely furnished and new. One Sunday near Christmas, I was working, mainly because I was the only one who could get all the football games tuned in from the satellite for the seven TV's that we had. It was much different than changing channels like it is today. Anyhow, David stopped by the bar and told me he was out buying pool supplies. I said, "You have a pool?" I had been there several times at night, but the blinds were always closed. I was not impressed that he had a pool, just thought it was funny I didn't know that.

He told me he wanted to give me a personal Christmas gift before he came to my family Christmas. He gave me a pair of sapphire and diamond earrings. They were beautiful and when he left, my boss told me he was a keeper. Suzie, who had bought the bar, was a very opinionated Japanese lady. She made me laugh because she didn't like many of the guys I had dated in the two years she known me. She acted like a mother hen.

One day David asked me if I wanted to take a vacation with him. He told me to pick a place. I chose Paris. We got tickets, passports and were ready to leave on Feb 3, 1990. I broke my ankle for the second time in January. I got my heel caught coming out the front door, which resulted in a compound and shattered bones break. Exactly like it had been done when I was 16. I was in the hospital for several days and when I got out, I went home to live with David. We never made it to Paris, so we went to Las Vegas on that day 16 years ago to get married. I was in a cast, used crutches going down the aisle and cannot remember most of the vows. We were both nervous getting married. It was quick and we headed home the next day, me in the back seat with my leg elevated.

Lightening had struck. I was thirty and I was married. Zoe was born the next year and sixteen months after that, Katharine was born. We had a nice little family and we were very happy and having a lot of fun.

We never did go to Paris, which is fine with me. We have traveled to places I never thought I would see. We went to Honduras after my ankle healed. Roatan, for scuba and snorkeling and then to Copan to see David's daughter and the Mayan ruins. We went on a cruise to Alaska when I was six months pregnant with Zoe. We spent a couple of days in Vancouver after the cruise. We went to NY and CT pretty regularly before and after the girls were born. There have been vacations to other countries as well. Before I met David, I had only been on two planes. One to go to Mexico City and once I took a sea plane to Catalina Island which is about 26 miles from our coast.

We have had our ups and downs, mostly ups fortunately. I have been blessed to be married to this very generous, handsome, funny and exceptionally intelligent man for the past sixteen years. We have been very blessed with our girls as well.

Last night we went to see Walk the Line with the girls and tonight we are going on a date to Mozambique, a restaurant here in town!

Happy Anniversary David. I love you.