The Past?! No. More: the Future!

Dad used to say that birthdays and New Years are great times to "draw the line" and remember how far you've come.

So, today, as I celebrate you, I am also celebrating all the memorable, sometimes hilarious, sometimes scary times we have shared. I can't help but feel grateful and blessed that you were born to share all these times with me!

I look back at all the years that have gone by since that fateful day when we glanced at each other in the newspaper hallway. I would have lost good money if someone would have told me we'd be where we are today on that day. And I am glad I would have lost!

Do you remember ...

• Our first camping trip on Kerr Lake (2008) - I could not believe it that Mr. “Comfort Man” agreed not only to a tent-camping trip with me on Kerr Lake, but also agreed to it in the middle of Bug Season, North Carolina. This was back when we were just “work friends” and not even dating. I guess a man does a lot when he’s (somewhat secretly) in love. You worked tirelessly for days to prepare to make sure we'd have everything, but still forgot your newly-bought, much-talked-about lantern at home. Maybe that was a good omen since our life together has been just that: a mix of well-planned years as well as feeling in the dark. Who knows?!
• That hot July 4th in the Moab desert, when we rented a hot-red Jeep Wrangler to drive around Canyonlands, totally off-grid, when it was so hot that our ice melted in the hard-top cooler inside the car with the A/C blasting? We had no cell-signal, our water boiling hot, 30 miles away from any paved roads, and truly I thought we will just die in the middle of nothing and they’ll find our bare bones, meat shriveled up from heat, maybe a week later, we'd cook that fast!
• The “big proposal” in a poetic and friendly spot called “The Devil’s Kitchen”, in the middle of nothing, atop a mountain desert in Utah?
• Our wedding day when the wind picked up so strongly it was impossible to light our unity candle. Our minister said “it’s mostly symbolic” and everyone laughed, as in "isn't it all?!". Two people had to hold the screen behind the "unity table" so as not to be blown away by the wind. In the nervousness of it all, I had to also drop your ring and scratch it before I could put it on your finger. Should we say "ominous" again?! Hmm ...
• That time when we drove to Bryce Canyon for our first anniversary, having booked a hotel and paid for it and everything, and arrived around 11PM (after work, tired, and weary, driving through the desert with no soul around) and finding that the hotel is “closed for the winter” (April is “winter” in Utah, I guess!). Good thing that another, smaller, local hotel was open right across the street, and almost empty and could put us up for a couple of nights. That "luck" followed us years later, when we tried checking into another hotel we thought we made reservations for in Boone, NC, only to be told they have no record of us. Again, we were lucky that we found another room nearby, despite it being Labor Day weekend. Life is just fussy enough for us to make us remember it, isn't it?!
• Why is it that our weirdest memories are hotel-related mishaps?! Hmm ... Like that time when we were haunted in our hotel room in Blowing Rock, NC.
• The time when we flew to Europe and we almost got stuck there in the middle of the French airline workers’ strike. We got rerouted through Germany on our way back, only to have me detained and patted down three times before allowing me to book the flight to the US.
• The first time you took me to a casino in Mesquite, NV, the day I got laid off and on my first try, the first time in my life when I touched a slot machine, I won $20. I reckon life knew I needed it that day ... 
• We have all the luck with the snow, too - especially hitting us at the least expected times: on top of Grandfather Mountain in early November (early for North Carolina for sure), when the snowstorm wind got us locked out of the car, we got snowed in in Deer Valley, UT one year and then again in Jackson Hole, WY the following year both on Memorial Day weekend (end of May). Someone up there must know you’re from Michigan and that you of all people can take it. Little do they know that 20+ years of The South melted you up.
• That time when we rode the motorcycle on the Alpine Loop in Utah (25 miles away from home) and our battery died in Lehi (50 miles away from home), on our way back in the middle of a scorching hot July summer day!  We had to walk our cycle to the nearest grocery store to get into some A/C for comfort, and wait for a tow truck. But how available is a tow truck on July 4th?! I have never in my life spent that many hours in a grocery store without buying a thing, let’s just say that. 
• That time when we took your mom for her 70th birthday to Niagara Falls and the only restaurant open for dinner was in a ... discount t-shirt store?! Yeah, classy all right! 
• That time you walked into my parents’ kitchen for the very first time, at night, famished from a 24 hour trip across the world, grabbed your first morsel of meat sitting on the table and said “I love this! What is it?!” We all answered: “Cow tongue!”
• The time when we ended up in a shipping container in Bucharest, in the middle of a foggy, wet, November night, trying to rent a car on the black market from these kids who declared the container their very legit and very official “office”. 
• Do you remember the wind- and sand-storm in Sulphur Springs, Montana, in the middle of the prairie, waiting for Donna the Buffalo to start playing at the very originally named “Red Ants Pants Music Festival”? I have never eaten that much dust in my life! I swear, 10 years later, I am still dusting off my camera and my backpack, 10 years later!
• That time you volunteered to slice lemons for a friend’s wedding and you sliced your finger instead, bad enough to require stitches?! You never touched a mandoline again, but I can't remember if you even ever attempted to slice lemons either! If life hands them to us, we eat them whole nowadays, it seems.
• You remember how you did not die, despite all your protests and refusal to advance, when I made you climb up to Timpanogos Cave (6700 feet) in Utah, nor to the end of the South Mountains Park trail in North Carolina?! I love when you just trust me ...
• That time we saw the black bears hang out in the trees off a trail in Georgia?! 
• That time when you fed the iguanas in Honduras? 
• That time we thought we bought a turkey breast and all we got was turkey nuggets in a bundle and we had a house (almost) full of people to feed for Christmas? Hmm... yeah - good times! 
• That time we were so excited to see Willie Nelson in concert and he walked off the stage and never returned?! 
• That time when we lobbied together in the halls of Congress in DC for FH Awareness (serious) and made fun of the Ben & Jerry's cow decal outside Senator Bernie Sanders' office (not so serious)?! And that is so you: a mix of stern elegance and casual comedian all rolled-up into one!
• That time when we had our first Thanksgiving dinner in our brand-new house in North Carolina with an unboxed, newly-delivered but uninstalled yet dishwasher in the middle of the dining room? 
• Our big trek in our camper, The Pup, across America?! Boy, how I want to do that again soon!
• That time when we judged the beers at the Athens Beer Festival in Ohio and actually felt like we knew what we were doing? I guess everyone thinks this after a few sips of craft beer?!

But much, much more than the many times we have spent together, I love the possibilities of what is coming ahead of us! There will be hard times but I am sure as I am of these two hands typing this that there will be good times too. I just pray for health and peace and strength and cannot wait to see the future. With you, hand in hand.

Whether we are climbing a mountain, shooting birds, making dinner, or buying a car, a house, or a camper, I know we’ll have a good time and live to tell the stories for whoever is there to listen. Even if it's just us, recollecting.

Whether I am mourning a friend, a parent, or a pet, or I am going through some near-death health scares, I know you’ll be there, stronger than the Rock of Gibraltar to support me.

I love you with all my stitched up heart. I would be lost, scared, confused and adrift without you.

Thanks for being you.

And thanks for being mine.  

Happy birthday, my love! Can't wait for the next 50+ years ...