Number Fifty

Number Fifty-

Celebrations help mark the important events in our lives.  We celebrate holidays, birthdays, weddings, spring returning, flowers blooming.  Celebrations are happy times.  People get together to sing, dance, eat, play, remember.  Banners hang across walls, trees warm rooms, champaign glasses clink, gifts are opened, laughter fills the air.  What happy, happy times.

This year is one of those happy, happy times for my little family.  Fifty years ago this summer the boy on the neighboring farm and I said those words that have kept us together.  We were young.  We had nothing.  No possessions.  No money.  Not much else but love for one another.  A few shower gifts.  A new place to live.  Striking out on our own.

All the things that eventually cause worry and sleepless nights were yet to appear.  Everything was new and exciting.  Certainly there were adjustments.  A few whys along the way.  A bump here and there.  Maybe even an occasional detour to regroup and move forward again.  Life happens.  We grow and change.  We learn to accept one another- warts and all.  We forgive.  We make up.  We continue our journey.

People celebrate this big number numerous ways.  Some have a family dinner.  Some take that long awaited cruise.  Some put their wedding pictures along with a current picture in the local newspaper.  We thought about all of these ways of celebrating.  And then we came up with our own way.

We decided to do something special every month of this year.  To celebrate every month instead of one time.  To make this year a year of memories.  One of the things we are looking forward to is visiting the 50th state.  We have been in 49.  This year we will visit Rhode Island.  Finish our desire to visit all fifty states.   Boston is in our sights for the fall.  We have been there, but Boston is ever new.  Much history we have not experienced.  Key West is on for the fall, too.  We have visited Florida many times, but never made the trip all the way to the Keys.  On the list is a trip to the Pacific Northwest to a major sand castle building contest that occurs between low and high tide on one particular summer day. We have reserved our room on the ocean for that special day.  What fun to watch sand artists create wonder in such a short time.  Following that we will drive to Washington state, catch a ferry to Victoria Island in Canada and visit Buchart Gardens.  A short trip but filled with beauty and wonder.

Of course we will want to celebrate with our friends and family.  So we plan to throw a big party at our home in the country.  To laugh and share stories.  To make new memories.  If you are in our neighborhood, stop in and share it with us.

We will fill all the months with something special.  A play, a musical, a weekend trip.  And when the year has ended, we will look back and say it was all good.  That we would do this thing called marriage all over again.  That we are lucky to reach this milestone.  That we know how fortunate we are.

Others have made more money than we have.  Others have bigger homes, finer cars.  Others have all those possessions that the world says we humans need to be called successful.  Money, homes, cars, possessions are all good things.  What we believe is people are the most important thing in life.  Precious people.  Interesting people.  Creative people.  Loving people.  How grateful we are to have been touched by so many lives.  We are truly fortunate and humbled.

So our big year is here.  We look at one another and see that young person saying those vows.  We see the change that comes with years of living.  And we love one another more.  And count the time we have left as precious.