On Forty Years

We are fortunate, well I suppose some of us are, to happen upon friends in our lives who impact us, make a difference, fill our sails and at times, help to redefine what we thought we knew and illuminate what we did not. 

I am lucky. 

I am lucky to have read Sports Illustrated and being a Connecticut Yankee who thought he knew so much back in the 70's, thought that I could learn something by traveling to Arizona State to pursue my education. 

Yet, it started so strangely.  This long-haired guy strumming on guitar (badly) who would not stop as I was trying to study a room over.  Trying to get me to have a beer and relax a bit when the stress of school was so prominent.

I was lucky to have met this wide-eyed woman who came to visit at ASU during a break and my initial reaction was to walk into the campus waterfalls to cement a future lifelong friendship based on good laughs and shared memories. 

People persist in their relationships through hard work.  Maintaining the love and respect that couples have for one another is a challenge even for the best of us, and even in the best of marriages.  We all change.  We all evolve, and if we don't do this cooperatively, then we drift away from one another.  Having three children to raise,  jobs that force you to move from one state to another, and your own physical issues that come with the years one accrues on this planet, also add to this "challenge." 

A couple that has made it forty years has figured all of this out.  You guys have.  You have maintained that strong bond that I witnessed as best man in your wedding.  Your free spirit and grounded nature (contradictory on the service though each essential for longer marriages) has, from my perspective, kept you young at heart both figuratively and literally, in each other's arms. 

So, I am lucky to have known each of you.  Seeing how you have managed your marriage has helped me in my own through the good times and through the bad ones as well.  I am thankful for your kindness to me, Eva and Shomron when we have visited.  I wish that we all could get together more frequently, and hope that down the road we do, but feel fortunate for the days we have spent together. 

Congratulations on these forty years.  You have lived these years so well and I wish you (as does Eva, Shomron, Meirav, Daniella, and Forrest) many more to come. 

Jamie