15 Years
Today marks the 15th anniversary of standing at the front of a church full of family and friends, making all sorts of promises in front of somebody dressed in a table-cloth while having vague threats from an imaginary being commuted towards us.
It doesn't seem like 15 years.
I can remember moments of that day as clearly as yesterday. I remember spending the night before the wedding in the same hotel as the reception. I remember being driven to the church by my brother, and making a mad dash to the jewellers on the morning of the wedding to get something for my other half, after she surprised me with a pocket watch at breakfast time. I remember waiting around outside the church as the first guests arrived, and then taking up position at the front. At the end of the ceremony, I remember turning around to face everybody, and being surprised that the church was full to the rafters. Who were all these people, and where had they all come from ? (all over the country, it turns out).
A lot has happened in 15 years. We have visited America, Turkey, Tunisia, France, Spain, and Italy. We appeared on breakfast television. We went through IVF (spectacularly unsuccessfully). And of course we also adopted three little girls (now not so little). Along the way we seem to have also acquired a number of cats and fish too.
It seems crazy looking back to realise not only that we have been married for 15 years, but that the children have now been with us for 8 of those years. I sometimes wonder what we filled each day with before children. I suppose we used to be able to watch television shows when they were broadcast, instead of two days later in the early hours of the morning. We used to be able to go for a drink after work. We used to be able to head out for lunch on a weekend at the pub without a military operation to get us there. There's a lot of things we used to do, and don't any more.
After sharing the post that Facebook very helpfully prepared for me this morning, an old friend congratulated my other half on putting up with me. I suppose he's probably more right than he imagined. We all put up with each other to a certain extent, don't we. We're an odd lot.