27 Years of Romance...Or Something Like That.

Tuesday is the day I said I would write about reading or writing, but this Tuesday, I'm going to write about romance. My husband and I will celebrate our 27th anniversary on Thursday, and I thought I'd give you a little glimpse into our not-so-fairy-tale love affair.

I still remember the first time I saw him in the hallway at Sheffield Elementary school. We were in the fourth grade and I thought he was cute. He says he thought I had the biggest boobs he'd ever seen. He rode my bus and became best friends with my cousin. I figured out pretty quickly that he was a jerk, and although I still thought he was pretty cute, I tried to keep my distance. His sister stayed at the day care where my grandmother worked, so I got updates on "that little Jason Marlow" every so often from her. He wasn't just a jerk, he was a hoodlum, it seemed. Over the years, I caught glimpses of him here and there, and he was hot, but like I said, I kept my distance. Usually, I just stuck my nose in a book and ignored him (and the rest of the world).

Skip ahead to tenth grade and we moved to the church his family attended. I think he said something like "I can finally see the top of your head." the first time we talked. Did I mention I grew to my whole 5'2" height in elementary school and stopped growing upward after that? So in fourth grade, I was tall and had boobs. In tenth grade, I wasn't tall, but I did still have boobs.

The next year, my sister begged him to take me to the prom, because I was such a hopeless loser I didn't have a date. I know she told him something like that, so I blame her for what happened next.

I didn't just fall in love, I dove head first. We were engaged by the time I started twelfth grade and got married two days after I graduated. (My parents insisted I finish school before I got married, so I did.)

I can't sit here today and write that the last twenty-seven years have been a fairy tale. There have been days I thought about punching him in the nose, nights I considered smothering him with a pillow (I'm sure he's felt the same way about me), but for the most part, I know he is where I belong.

The people who know us well know there have been some very hard years, but we came through them, scathed and scarred, but together all the same. Through the years I 've learned one thing and it is the only piece of marital advice I can give:

Every relationship hits rough spots, some so rough you really do have to decide if you are going forward or calling it quits. When you come to that spot, you've got to look back over your life together this far and forward to your future, and you've got to decide is there enough in either one to keep trying.  Has there been enough good in the past to make you want to try? Is there enough good in the future to make you want to get there? I always found we had more good than bad in the past and I believed we would have more good than bad in the future, if we could just make it there.

A relationship is built from a whole lot of seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months and years. Even in the bad years, there were those smaller increments of time that held us over, gave us the strength to keep moving ahead, together.

The napkins at our wedding had this quote on them: "This day I will marry my friend, the one I laugh with, live for, dream with, love." You could substitute "jerk" on there and it would still mean the same thing. He is my jerk, my best friend, my rather screwed up, but loving Prince Charming.