Forty-Five Years

Our wedding day was forty-five years ago.  How can this possibly be true?  Where is that sweet, young, innocent couple that dated in high school and married four years later?  I was twenty and he twenty-two.  

Richard just graduated from Ohio State University and acquiring a job in our county was pretty much the best way to start a marriage, he would be an Ag. Teacher at the Greene County Career Center.  Oh, we were young and like all other young couples, probably had our head in the clouds.  Life would be perfect and we would grow old together.  

Three years into our marriage we had our first child, Ryan, three years later we had Trisha and three years after that we had Emily.  Each came with no special planning, it was just "time" and so it happened.  I think sometimes we have always just moved along, everything happening in it's own time.  

I laugh when I think about having children, we didn't have a clue what we were doing, everything just happened along.  Working out the difficulties of living on a little farm, raising animals, kids and making do with what we had.  I never wished for more, we were happy and things were just they way they needed to be.

Children grew up, children left home, children married and have children of their own.  We are grandparents?  What?  When did that happen?  Then we are talking about retirement, seriously?
We are too young to think of that, wonderful husband taught for 36 years in the same school that hired him when he was twenty-two.  Does anyone have a job in one place today?

Then suddenly we are talking Medicare.  What?  Life goes on.  We have NO control when it comes right down to it.  We make decisions based on the information we have at that very moment.  Time keeps moving us on to the next stage.  And yet our hearts still are young, we think we are still able to do things that our body is telling us not to do.  Doing things that used to take a couple days might take a week to finish.  What happened to those twenty year old kids?

My wonderful daughter thought it would be fun to notify our friends of our anniversary and have them send cards.  Well, we have been overwhelmed with lovely cards, some from people who were actually participants in the wedding!  New friends, old friends and even our insurance company sent a card!  What fun!  

Our three wonderful children are taking us out to dinner tonight, grand-kids included.  Should be great fun.  

With Thanks and Happiness to all who have made our journey together even more wonderful.