For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings, that then I scorn to change my state with kings.

Time.

It's been a long time.

It's been a wonderful time.

It's been twenty five years.

A quarter of a century.

It's our silver wedding anniversary.

I have written previously about when we met. How on March 19th, 1988, he saw me in the TLC production of Moliere's Tartuffe and it was love at first sight. It took him a year to work up the courage to speak to me, but on February 18th, 1989 he did, and it was love at first sight for me, too.

If you want to refresh your memory you can read about it here:

We were considered an unconventional couple. Many well meaning folks talked to me and tried to explain why I was completely wrong for him. I was too forward. I was too outgoing. I said "shit" a lot.  I was considered, perhaps, too easy in virtue for a good Christian boy like himself. I certainly didn't "know my place."

Thankfully,we ignored all those people because we knew we were soul mates. It is interesting to note that no well meaning person tried to talk him out of it.

We have always been different. Maybe that's what we saw in each other, the ability to "dwell in possibility" as my old friend Emily Dickinson once said.

Even our wedding was different. We had a Medieval wedding straight out of a Renaissance fayre. I loved our unconventional wedding.
                    
I loved the vows that we wrote:

From this day forward I am committing myself to you in marriage.

I promise to love, respect and trust you;

To teach you and learn from you;

to celebrate and grieve with you;

And to be true and loyal to you for as long as I shall  live. 

I loved that we researched Medieval wedding traditions at the public library and planned the wedding with our dear friend Richard Lea, who sadly died some years ago. His offer to marry us was the best wedding gift that we received. To make it even more unconventional, he wore some D&D robes to officiate. I am sure that caused a stir amongst those who had tried to talk me out of marrying Spiderman.

I loved that I wore a pink dress with sleeves that looked like bird wings instead of the traditional white. I loved that Spiderman was willing to wear pink, too.

I loved that we both walked down the aisle arm and arm with our parents and both our families gave us to each other.

I loved that we walked down the aisle to Beethoven's Für Elise instead of the traditional wedding march. 

I loved that we had young friends and an old friend in our wedding party.

I loved that I sang a song to him that included the words I'd travel on the seven seas, with seven ships and seven sails, for seven years and seven more to bring you home again to me and that he recited Shakespeare's Sonnet 29. Rich read from Le Morte D'Arthur. It was a very literary wedding, but then we are very bookish people.

I loved that we decided together that I should keep my maiden name even though in conservative Louisiana, it caused us lots of hassle like not being able to check into hotels, get a joint bank account, buy birth control without showing our marriage licence. I am sure all those tongues were just a-wagging over the scandal of it, but we knew it was right for us.

What I love is that we still make each other laugh. Big belly laughs until we are creased. Spiderman is pee-your-pants funny and I laugh like a hyena on crack when he is near.

What I love is that we still stay up all night talking about deep philosophical issues. We share deep and profound thoughts. We think together about the meaning of Life, the Universe and Everything and right the world's wrongs snuggled up side by side.

What I love is that we don't just talk about compassion, we live it. Being vegan together means that we are changing the world for the better, one mouthful at a time. It was my idea to go vegetarian and then vegan and he has embraced it and made it his own. It is wonderful to walk down this compassionate road together.

What I have loved  the most is that we share the same sense of adventure. When my dad died at the age of 56, not having done all the things he dreamed of doing, we decided there and then to  "take the road less travelled" as Robert Frost said. I love that we considered the What If and then the Why Not. On my own, I would have dreamed, but been too afraid to do it. I know this of myself. I am a worrier by nature. I would have thought What If, but found a thousand reasons to not follow through with the Why Not. But with Spiderman by my side, anything seems possible. We decided on our tenth wedding anniversary, that we would emigrate to the UK and we did two years later.

We knew God was calling us to a bigger life, so we decided to do it. Just trust that it would work as we both had such strong feelings that this was our destiny. We sold our house and our cars and 95% of our furniture and lived in a shitty, unheated studio apartment on Jackson Street so we could leave at moment's notice. The call with a job offer came mid December 2003 and we moved on January first, 2004. Here we are thirteen years later. Ten years in England and three years in Wales.

I love that we have done it differently. That we have chosen the adventure. Chosen what makes us happy and not listened to all those people who tried to tell us we would fail.

I love that we are still so in love. Honestly, people pretend to be sick because we are so "disgustingly in love" as one friend put it.

I can live with that.