On this day 20 years ago, while drinking beers at the Kansas City St. Patrick’s Day parade, Jerimiah asked me to be his girlfriend. I said, “Sure,” then hilarity ensued. Well, it took some years for the real hilarity, but right away I was happy. I was happy because I saw the potential of our life together. I saw how sweet this guy was and how lucky I was to snatch him up. He, I think, saw regular sex.

Now here we are 20 years later and this morning while I coughed up my morning phlegm and yelled at the oodles to get their shit together (Jackson would be scrambling to get to ready too, but he’s actually out of town with school today) I wondered if this is this what I thought marriage and being together forever would be like? Is it what he thought it would be like?

The truth is we are a thousand miles away from those kids on 18th and Vine 20 years ago. Yes we are actually living almost 1000 miles away, but when I look back at pics of those two kids in Kansas City I don’t recognize much about us. Life kind of beats you around in two decades, time leaves it mark on you. But what I see when I look at those pictures is this dumb kinda of optimism that I’m not sure how either of us ended up with. How lucky we are that the two of us, with our fucked up childhoods and our small-town worldviews, ended up not just together, but together and striving for a world we didn’t even know existed.

I just want to say thank you to you, Jerimiah. Thank you for the wonderful years between that parade and now. It has been wonderful. Yes, some days have been hard, terrible even, but even on the worst days I know I have you to come home to and that has always made it better. The life we have built is certainly better than we could ever imagined and certainly better than anyone expected or knew we were capable of back then. If it weren’t for you I don’t know where or who I would be, but I know it wouldn’t be this life and I am so incredibly grateful for you and your love.

Here’s to 20 more years and then 20 more and then… ❤

M.