It’s a bit belated, and I’ve already said this in person, but I’d like to mention this on my blog: Monday was the thirteenth anniversary of my wedding to my lovely wife, Erin.
Honestly, it’s hard to believe it was that long ago that I watched the church doors open and saw Erin framed by a beam of sunlight (seriously, you couldn’t get a better presentation than that). Time truly has flown. And the only real evidence that it has flown so fast is the fact that all of a sudden, there are two healthy and growing kids getting underfoot. How did that happen? Oh, yeah.
The anniversaries are going to be piling up in the coming months and years. In three years, it will be twenty years since Erin sent me that first e-mail that brought us together. In four years, Vivian will turn ten. In seven years, Nora will turn ten. In eight years, my parents will be celebrating their fiftieth anniversary.
That just amazes me. I still have pretty clear memories of my father’s fortieth birthday, and here I am, less than six months away from my own big four-oh. I don’t feel like I’ve changed massively. I’ve grown. I’ve matured. But looking back on the old me, I still see me.
When my mother turned fifty, she wrote in The New Hamburg Independent that the world was as big and as exciting to her then as it was when she was ten. Here I am, only a few years later, writing a regular column for the Kitchener Post, and I know exactly what she means. I guess as long as you have that sense, especially if you can add to that sense through your wife and children, you never really age. Not mentally, at least.