Day of Days

Before the earth travels once more round the sun, she’ll have been part of my life longer than not.  Everything past August 8, 2015 just tips the scales ever more in my favor.  All the bad breaks through my youth and adolescence were just karmic balance for everything that followed our first date.

Nine thousand, two hundred and fifty six days in, not one of those days mattered much anymore.  I had met the woman I was to marry.  I so declared as I arrived back at the ramshackle bachelor pad shared with Ray, Dave and whoever else needed a place to stow their ramshackle life for a few days.   It would take six hundred and twenty four more days to make it to the altar, but there was never any doubt.

We burned through a few hundred days from first date to wedding just waiting for the right season to come round again, with sufficient time for planning.  We picked October 14 for no particular reason except it was a mid-October Saturday, hoping to be suitable for our autumnal sensibilities.

I remember every detail of the day.  The weather was perfect; sunny and upper seventies.  The Call’s “Let the Day Begin” played - loudly - on WXRT as I drove to the church.  My dad’s handshake and smile as I met him in the hallway.  Standing there with my groomsmen, waiting for my bride.

She was stunning.  The wedding gown shimmered in white, cutting a beguiling swath through the crimson, gold and rust of the fall landscape.  She was the angel of my future, and each falling leaf floating down from the elms and maples was some vestige past we were putting behind us that day.          

Twenty five years passes, and not one goes by without me being grateful for her taking a chance on me.  Twenty five trips around the sun, twenty five circles of seasons, and the longer seasons of our lives meandering down their own aisles.  Some friends and family who were with us that day are gone.  Other friends and family we could only dream of that day are with us.  December 10 and July 14 also got added to the best days ever list, but this is the day that begat them.

It was all so improbable at the time, and the girl calls boy story still gets a smile every time it’s told.  But the improbable fate that brought us to that autumn day twenty five years ago seems more certain with every day I’m blessed to be married to Marcia