An End on the Day

Twenty-five years ago today, about now, Jane and I were at Pinehurst Conservation Grounds, near Paris. We had been married for a couple of hours. We were living in a trailer at the end of my parents' yard. We had our wedding bands, and a 1973 Pontiac that cost us $200.00 and some sheet metal and pop rivets. This was as much honeymoon as we got; I was back at work the next day.

Jane was twenty, I was twenty-one.

If I look back closely over those twenty-five years, they contain too much detail to hold in mind at once, too many significant circumstances to appreciate, too much joy and striving and love, setbacks struggle and quiet triumph to name, catalogue or savour in one setting at a keyboard. This is, perhaps, why the years seem to rush past as we grow older: we lose sight of everything that makes up those years because there is too much on which to reflect. We simply stop trying to remember it all, overwhelmed by the sheer volume of our lives.

What a long way we have come, Jane and I, and what a long time it took to get here!

Three days after we were married, I felt as if we had always been married , with a sense of acceptance and the knowledge that the universe was unfolding as it was supposed to. Life is still ultimately happy, fractal, organized chaos with new wonders revealed each day - we're not done yet.