Thiry-nine years ago today Donna and I were married on a Friday evening in Honolulu, HI at 8:00 pm Hawaiian time. It was a great time. Donna and I were both living in SoCal and she had gone back to Hawaii where her dad and mom were pastors at the beginning of the summer. Immediately after she left there was an airline strike on the airline that I had made reservations on. It lasted all summer. The trick was that I had to be in Hawaii by a certain date to get a marriage liscense. The day you applied and the day you picked it up did not count as a part of the three day waiting period, so I had to be there on Monday before the Friday we were to be married. The airline stike stopped the day before my scheduled flight. I was relieved.

There’s been a lot of water under the bridge since that day and no telling where it has all gone. I was reflecting this week (both a birthday and an anniversary two days apart) about how life has been over the last 39 years. The thought that struck me was that the decisions and experiences that I made and had over those years makes me the person that I am today. I can’t do anything about any of them. It is interesting that we are today an accumulation of the things we have done and experienced. Any one of those things being changed would have led down a completly different path and taken us on a journey differently than the one we are presently traveling. Quite sobering to say the least.

On my birthday (August 24), my family and I went out to lunch and my son who is 32 said, “dad, we need to have a son and father chat.” I said, “Go for it.” He told me that I needed to discover what I was going to do in life before I got too old. That was funny, at least to me.

So this is an official “Happy Anniversary” to Donna and I. May we live long and prosper.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 26th, 2005 at 8:19 am and is filed under Personal.