Best Day Ever

I know its pretty cliché to say that your wedding day was the best day ever, but mine really was.  It was perfect because of so many things.  We got married at the 4-H Camp that I went to for 13+ years as a kid and on into my early 20's.  We got married on a Sunday in September and almost everyone who we wanted to be there could be and was there.  I wore cowboy boots (you can see a tiny bit of them in the picture).   My dad wore cowboy boots. Kevin did not wear cowboy boots (not his style). We didn't spent a crap ton of money and we still had a nice afternoon picnic style reception.  This is one of the funniest pictures from that day (and probably a pretty genuine one too). My mom made those quilts in the background (!)

But the best part of all was the end result - we are married.  I know it sounds ridiculous and so many people that are free spirit types wave away the notion of marriage.  But I really do think that it means something symbolic.  It says to the other person "hey, I'm here for the long haul" like nothing else could.  My husband and I have a story that starts out kind of funny (I tell people he was having sex with one of my college roommates and then he became one of my college roommates), grows into a great friendship (which sometimes backfires on me because my husband got to witness the best years of my life....ok not really, but he sure as hell got to see more than one morning-after-a-good-night-out, and also is more than aware of my class cutting habits in college), and then some time down the road turns into something more.  About the time college was allllllmost over, and I realized that if I didn't do something, he was going back to his hometown (three hours from mine) probably never to be seen or heard from again aside from a random email or two.  And that wasnt going to cut it for me.

So, the boy and the girl in a little canoe (haha corny 4H camp song lyric) had a typical nice early relationship like most couples do.  Then college was over for both of them, it was time to buy a house (that cost $10,000.00, and you can imagine the shape it was in), live in said house that was a construction zone, while studying for the bar exam and not living on a lot of cash.  Needless to say, the relationship hit some serious troubled water, I moved out and back home for awhile.  But around the time I decided I might like to let someone else be close to me and know things about me, even as  a friend, I put the brakes on it because I realized no one knows me like Husband does.  And no one ever will.  And I don't want someone to.  It took years for us to build up what we had, and I came so close to breaking it down and throwing it away. Don't get me wrong, some of it was broken and needed some TLC and repairing, and some of it we never really did get back, but that's OK. Needless to say, the road to wedded bliss was not smooth paved blacktop, but its OUR road to travel on TOGETHER.  For the long haul.   Marriage certainly hasn't fixed all of life's woes, and the road past wedded bliss hasn't been perfect either.  But who needs perfect?  We are happy with each other and happy with our life together.  So what else matters? 

So many songs make me think of Husband.  Here are a few.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPd1GIwjRFM  we are fragile, but I'm glad he's taken the chance on me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncxNQaYwY-c (forgive the cheesy video taping of the song, but this one had to be a video of him singing it live....this is one of the very few concerts we have ever gone to together and it was so fun)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rueDR8J5gjE  LOVE this one too.



 

What Matters

The past few days I have been 300 miles from home at a conference for work. Thinking about the events in Boston yesterday made me realize none of this matters. While I am fortunate enough to like my job and to like my colleagues, at the end if the day none of what I'm doing here matters. What matters is my family and my farm. Not the money I make, not the important people I might know, not the clothes I wear or the car I drive.

This article led to my Facebook post today.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/15/opinion/granderson-boston-safety/index.html

My Facebook post linked to this article and this is what I said. Because of our greed and push into the global economy, we have forgotten to take care of what is at home. We have lost our sense of community and of place. This isn't something that happened overnight. It has been a gradual transition from a country with a sense of community to a country of people who don't care about each other. Maybe I'm jaded because I was a privileged child. And I'm still privileged. But not in the way you might think. I was raised by parents who instilled hard work, responsibility for myself and discipline. I lived in a rural community where I had a sense of place and belonging. I know at least 1/3 of the population of our county, if not more. If we had a problem we had people to call, just the same as if we had a joyful event we had people to share it with. Do people still have that?? Or are we so wrapped up in our careers, our moneymaking, our kids soccer/dance/band/football/baseball/soccer/ whatever else it is that kids do that gets in the way if being a kid that we have forgotten how to be a community? How to support each other and take care of each other and feel joy and sorrow for each other?

All I know is things aren't they way they used to be, and it happened fast, within my short 32 year lifetime. It's not the fault of the current administration though some might find a way to argue it is. We can only search people so much, and keep things like guns away from people to only a certain degree, and we can't put all the bad guys in jail. We HAVE to do something.....but what will it be? How can we get back to the America my parents knew? The idyllic 1950s pre Vietnam Leave it to Beaver society we once knew? Or is it too late?