Anniversary

We celebrated our 33rd wedding anniversary this week. As I approach my 60th year, I realize that more than half my life has been with Betty J. Brantley. In May of 2012, we will have known each other fourty years. Anyone who has spent time with me understands the horrors she has put up with. After decades of sickness and health, happiness and sorrow, we still make each other laugh, and complete each other's unclear sentences. She gets me, and has always allowed me to be who I am. She is a keeper. I knew it the day we met.

We were introduced by her roommate, Elizabeth, a fellow art student and class buddy in Chapel Hill. The afternoon Liz introduced us, I took the girls for a beer, and then we all drove in my red convertible to a country barbecue joint where I carved our initials on a picnic table, "BJB + RLC." I was smitten. She was not. We became pals. The two roommates held a sort of Salon in their tiny apartment, and threw amazingly stylish parties, with interesting, talented students always lingering in those smoky, hazy early years of the seventies. BJ and I stayed in touch after graduation through newsy letters, and while I was living in Washington, she came for a weekend visit, and our friendship grew and blossomed.

We were wed in the coldest dark of winter by warm candlelight in a small chapel. The groomsmen in black tuxedoes, behaved like naughty penguins; putting raisins on their front teeth to appear toothless, as they paraded down the isle trying to crack my icy face. The beautiful bridal attendants were dressed in cerise silk, and carried bouquets of white french tulips. As a groom, you have the best seat in the house, watching the spectacle unfold before your eyes. I remember every single detail of that play. My dear dad had obtained one of my mother's "little helpers" for me to swallow along with my jitters, so I was as cool as the chilled January air outside. As the crowd stood for the bridal processional, she appeared at the door on her father's arm; dressed in her mother's wedding gown, a cloud of white satin and lace that appeared angelic. Her bouquet was an riotous explosion of wild color - cerise, purple, yellow and pink, as if she had plucked the essence of spring and held it in her hands. She took my breath away.

 She still takes my breath away. I wonder if our initials are still on that picnic table?