Archive for July, 2011

New Loft, New Stuff

Posted: July 9, 2011 in Love and Marriage
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We got a phone call from one of my wife’s former co-workers at Dillard’s while we were on the train coming back from Chicago.  We had to be at the station early Saturday morning to catch the train back to St. Louis, so we only had time to get up and have a quick breakfast before heading out.  The call was from the furniture manager.

While she had worked there, my wife had picked out a sofa that she wanted for the loft.  It was too expensive, but she got an employee discount and the furniture often went on sale.  When she resigned and we still hadn’t been able to buy it, we told him that if it ever went on clearance to call us.

We didn’t expect to be on a train in another state when he did, but that was the day it got marked down, and we knew that it would probably go fast.  Earlier, we had tried to do the same with a leather recliner and it had been sold before we could get there.  I explained where we were and offered to give my credit card number over the phone if necessary, but he said he would mark it sold and make sure that we got it.

The train crossed the river into St. Louis right around lunchtime, and our beautiful city had never seemed more inviting.  We decided to drive to The Hill for lunch at Guido’s, the same place we had gone with my daughter the day the tide began to turn for our marriage.  It seemed only fitting after a spectacular weekend of restoration in Chicago.

We made the drive home in the afternoon and went straight to the mall to pay for the sofa.  In the meantime, I had listed what we called “the mushroom,” an odd shaped sofa/loveseat sort of piece of furniture on Craigslist, as it would have to go to make room for the new couch.  We wouldn’t be able to pick up our new one until I could borrow a truck, so we had a little time to work with.

As a final stop before going home, we pulled into the Steak and Shake near our loft for peppermint shakes.  My wife loves all things peppermint, but will almost never eat or drink any outside of the Christmas season.  The shakes signaled the unofficial beginning of the season for us, and allowed the glow of the trip to linger for just a little longer.

It was important from a memories and association standpoint (and especially for my mental health) to replace a lot of the furniture and change the appearance of the loft.  We needed to make it our place, not the place my wife had lived while we were separated.  Someone came that very night and bought the mushroom, clearing the way for us to pick our new couch up the following afternoon.  We had already gotten a new dining room table, and just those two things changed the loft a lot.

We got some other surprise blessings that helped us finish the process just about the time we were getting ready to move.  I hadn’t wanted to breach the subject, since the loft we were living in was the one she had picked out, but even with the changes, it was difficult for me to live there.  Fortunately, between her understanding, and a growing frustration with the property manager’s lack of response to any of our maintenance requests, she was all too willing to begin looking for an upgrade with me.  By moving into a brand new loft together, we would be able to leave behind all of the reminders of what had happened, and free ourselves from some troublesome issues related to our past.

Right before our move, I got an extraordinary deal at Macy’s on a new bedding set.  There was also a black leather recliner there that I wanted, and I had been waiting for it to go on clearance, much like we had waited for the couch at Dillard’s.  One of the people I worked with told me that she had bought one recently and now didn’t need it, and would be willing to sell it to me at a fraction of the cost of a new one.  I was able to buy it, and buy the floor model (it did go on clearance at about the same time), so we had matching chairs to complete our new living room set.

Those kinds of blessings have been common throughout this entire year.  We just take them as that much more evidence that God is with us in the process of restoring our marriage.  The New Testament teaches that marriage is symbolic of God’s love for His church, called “The Bride of Christ” in the scriptures.  He is very interested in not only saving our marriage and making it strong, but also in doing the same for anyone else who will give Him the opportunity.

Holidays in Chicago – Part 2

Posted: July 8, 2011 in Love and Marriage
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There was no doubt that Chicago in 2010 was going to be an epic stop on the restoration tour.  This time, we were going to make sure that it was the most special of all the visits.

Under ordinary circumstances, that can be hard to do, and can even backfire.  Sometimes, the harder you try to set something up just right and make sure that everything is perfect, the more the pressure causes it to fall apart, or the fact that it doesn’t live up to the hype leaves a lingering disappointment.  In our case, we had found our love again, and that was the secret key that unlocked the magic of our restoration trip.

My wife loves traveling by train, and we found out that we could catch Amtrak in St. Louis and take the train on to Chicago.  Since we don’t drive in Chicago anyway, not having a car there not only isn’t a problem, it saves having to pay for parking.  The only drawback was that we had to catch the train in St. Louis at about 4AM.  I figured we could catch up on our sleep later, which we did, and we even caught a few winks on the train.

This time, we went up the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, and we got a hotel right on the loop for three nights.  My wife knows how to find amazing deals online and we paid only slightly more for the three nights than we usually pay for one when we stay out in the outskirts.  We were right off Michigan Avenue and literally one block from where the parade starts.

Almost everything was within walking distance, so we hardly even needed the bus or the El Train.  That’s one of the benefits of being active and in shape.  We walked up Michigan Avenue, to Navy Pier and all over downtown.  It doesn’t cost anything to walk, you don’t have to wait on buses and trains, and you get to see things you would ordinarily miss.  For example, when we walked past the Tribune Tower, we discovered that there are bricks and stones inserted into the exterior wall that come from famous locations all over the world.  Passing by in a vehicle, we would never see any of that.

The first day we took a nap at the hotel and then walked to Navy Pier.  For supper, we stopped in Fox and Obel and bought ingredients to make our own deli sandwiches and a bottle of wine to take back to the room.  It was mostly a relax and rest first day, so that we would be ready to get up early and go to the parade the next morning.  This time, we wouldn’t have to get up insanely early and take a train downtown to get a good spot.  We could just get up and pretty much already be there.

The parade was amazing and the weather was absolutely perfect.  Afterward, we walked to the opening of the Christkindlmarket, where we ate German food for lunch and bought souvenirs.  My wife got a picture with the Christmas fairy from Nuremberg, and we had a wonderful time at the market.  After another nap at the hotel, we realized it was Thanksgiving Day, so not much was open.  We decided to revive an old Thanksgiving tradition of ours and go to a movie.  We walked to a downtown theater and watched “Tangled,” which had just come out.  After the movie, we grabbed a bite at a sports bar and called it a night.

We didn’t have any big plans for the rest of the trip except going to Pizzeria Uno, so friday was pretty much wide open.  It was black friday, and we had no desire to fight the crowds to shop for things we didn’t really want, so we slept in and had a leisurely breakfast.  Eventually we ventured out and walked around Millenium Park and visited a few of the stores on Michigan Ave.  We did do a little shopping, but at our own pace and just for the fun of it.

We went back to the market for more German food and just because we enjoy it so much.  We always buy a Stollen to bring home, and we also collect the souvenir mugs that they serve the gluhwein, a hot spiced wine in.  This year, we also wanted to bring back some ornaments from the Christmas shop to remember this trip by.  Then we got our Chicago pizza at Uno and the trip was complete.

There have been lots of little restorations and a few big ones during this past year.  Chicago was definitely one of the biggest.  It was, and remains, a place where we feel as though we can step outside the stress and busyness of real life and go to our romantic dream world once a year.  We are just as much in love now when we are at home as we are anywhere else, but Chicago holds a special place in our hearts, and of all our treasured memories from nearly 15 years of marriage, there may be more from Chicago than anywhere else.

Holidays in Chicago – Part 1

Posted: July 7, 2011 in Love and Marriage
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My wife was an army brat, so she tells people she isn’t really from anywhere, but she considers Germany home.  She lived there for much of her childhood and teens and, almost from the time we started dating, she told me how much she wanted to take me there.  Of all the things she talked about, the thing she loved the very most was the Christkindlmarket, an open air market that was set up during the Christmas season.

About 10 years ago, she was surfing the internet and discovered that they actually bring a Christkindlmarket, with vendors from Nuremberg and other German towns, to downtown Chicago every year.  We still haven’t been to Germany, but our love affair with the city of Chicago began with our very first visit.  The Christkindlmarket runs from Thanksgiving Day to Christmas Eve. and they set it up in Daley Plaza, right in the heart of Chicago.  We drove up on Thanksgiving Day that first year.

I’ll never forget the look on my wife’s face or her reaction when we arrived.  She said the sights and smells were exactly as she remembered, and she was absolutely glowing with excitement.  It was a magical trip, with more memories than I can possibly list here.  I took a picture of her in her new coat standing in front of the 80 foot Christmas tree and we had it made into an 8×10. It’s a photo that I treasure to this day.  When she moved out, she didn’t take it with her.  There are not many possessions that mean a whole lot to me, but that’s one of the few that it would break my heart to lose.

Not only did we experience the Christkindlmarket for the first time, but we also discovered Navy Pier.  Jutting out into Lake Michigan, Navy Pier holds a shopping mall, ferris wheel, children’s museum, and more.  There is a stage where plays and family oriented performances are held, and there is so much there that you could literally spend an entire day.

Of course, we spent time on Michigan Avenue, also known as the magnificent mile.  It’s especially spectacular at night with all the Christmas lights up.  Even though we are not big shoppers, the beauty and fame of the street make it a “must see” part of any trip to the windy city.  Just to the east, Grant Park runs for miles between Michigan Avenue and Lakeshore Drive, which literally follows the western shore of Lake Michigan.

Since that first visit, we have been to Chicago many times, but always during the Christkindlmarket.  Much like The Hill in St. Louis, it has always been an extremely special place for us.  Through the years, we have discovered additional pleasures like Pizzeria Uno, where you usually have to wait over an hour for your table, and we always do.  The pizza is so thick that it is impossible to eat much more than two slices, and it is now an every time stop when we’re in town.  We also love Fox and Obel, a gourmet food store and much more.

When the kids were in high school, we told them we would take them on a senior trip and they could pick anywhere they wanted to go.  They all picked Chicago.  Only two of them have actually taken the trip (others are still pending), but I guess they’ve seen how much we’ve loved it and they wanted to experience it for themselves.

We got to experience another dream come true when we took our son on his trip and that was seeing the Thanksgiving Day parade in person.  It was so cold that we couldn’t feel our feet before it was over, and we headed straight for the nearest Starbucks to revive ourselves, but we were there, almost at the front of the crowd at the corner of State and Washington.

That was also the trip that marred our nearly perfect memories of holiday trips to Chicago.  It was a couple of years ago, while I was having doubts about our marriage and our future.  I wasn’t the same person then that I had been before, and while the trip still had its good moments, it had some tension and problems too.  At one point, we were in a downtown Old Navy store and I was in a really foul mood.  I’m not even sure why, but I turned on my wife in the store and said some really hurtful things to her.

They were the same types of things that I sometimes said at home when I would get selfish and irritable.  They always caused her pain and confusion, because she never knew what she had done wrong.  Truthfully, there was usually nothing that she had done; she just caught the blame for my own issues.  The fact that it happened in Chicago during the holidays made it nearly unbearable.  We had a whole year to live with it, but we knew last year’s trip during the restoration tour was going to be spectacular…

Words Can Never Hurt Me?

Posted: July 6, 2011 in Love and Marriage
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The low light of our Fourth of July trip to St. Louis was seeing and hearing a couple argue and fight at the zoo.  They were there with a little boy, presumably their son, and I first heard them using cross words while inside one of the exhibits.  It’s not unusual to have some frustrating moments when you take kids to a place like that, and it was an unusually hot day, so I didn’t think much of it.  Later, however, there they were again, walking down a main pathway really being ugly toward each other.

We see that kind of dynamic far too often, and I’m not sure why people don’t seem to realize how destructive it can be.  A study called the Enrich Couple Inventory looked at more than 21, 000 couples and found that the number one indicator of a lasting and happy marriage was the way they talked to each other.  Whoever said, “words can never hurt me,” must have lived in a bubble, because our words have the power both to build up and tear down.  The book of Proverbs takes it even further by saying, “The tongue has the power of life and death.”

My wife often makes the observation that couples will see their children grow up and leave to live their own lives. If the parents haven’t spoken well to each other and of each other, not only will their children not know how to love their future spouses, but the couples themselves may find that, once the kids leave, they don’t have anything left to their marriage.  The kids will eventually be out on their own and the marriage is what will still be there for couples who have kept that relationship strong.  I can’t tell you how many times I hear her say under her breath, “Keep talking to him (or her) like that and when those kids are gone, he will be too.”

Words of affirmation is one of the five love languages in Gary Chapman’s book.  We all make choices every day to use words that are kind, or words that are cruel.  We choose to be polite, or to be rude.  We choose to compliment or criticize.  And for some reason, it seems easier to say something negative than something positive.

In the past, I was guilty of pointing out things that my wife did wrong, or that I didn’t like, far more often than I told her things that would build her up.  I would also lose my temper and say things that cut her deeply at times.  Likewise, she would fail to tell me the positive things she felt about me, assuming that I knew, but she would say hurtful things when she was angry.  Obviously, we weren’t meeting each other’s needs for emotional love.

Society tries to let us off the hook by making it a joke to insult people. Television and movies are full of creative ways to cut people down, and when we get called out for doing it, the automatic excuse is, “I was just joking,” or, “I didn’t mean it.”  The problem is that it damages people, and when the person you’re damaging is your spouse, you’re ultimately hurting yourself.

I think people in stores and other public places are often shocked when they hear my wife and I talking to each other now.  We tease and play around, but are very careful to stay within the boundaries of having fun with each other.  Author Francine Rivers calls it, “the needle without the sting.”  You can only have that type of fun when you know each other well enough and have a high enough level of emotional intimacy.  Otherwise, there are bound to be hurt feelings and misunderstandings.

We have also learned the value of controlling our tongues.  Just today, when we were doing a stressful job at my sister’s house, I was tired, hungry, and frustrated.  I chose not to say anything rather than say something hurtful at one point.  In the past, I probably would have snapped at my wife and made her feel bad.  Once we got in the car, I told her I was sorry for being silent and explained why.  I thanked her for her help and support and she said kind things back to make me feel better.

Most importantly, we have learned that choosing to use words that heal, words that build, and words that affirm, costs us nothing, but gains us much.  Words of kindness and love are gifts that anyone can afford, and they come back to us.  If you don’t believe me, just try it out for a while.  Stop with the negative words to your spouse, and start consciously talking to him or her in a way that recognizes his or her worth.  I bet that before long, you’ll start getting the same in return.

Giving Good Gifts

Posted: July 5, 2011 in Love and Marriage
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Years ago, before our marriage problems, my wife and I read a book called The Five Love Languages by Dr. Gary Chapman.  While we liked the ideas, I’m afraid we failed to apply them to our relationship.  We weren’t having problems with our love at the time, and it seemed like good information to know, but we didn’t really get anything out of it because we didn’t act on what we read.  Currently, we are reading the book again, and this time, we are working on making sure that we don’t just skim over it and fail to take the actions that will help strengthen our bond.

The author identifies five major ways that people give and receive love.  He believes that people have a primary “language” by which they communicate love to their spouses and want to receive love in return.  If the two people speak different love languages, their needs will go unmet to the degree that they don’t understand what the other person is trying to express.

When we read the book so many years ago, my wife’s primary love language was gifts.  Mine was words of affirmation.  That was something of a problem in that we spoke different languages, so we either didn’t recognize actions that were meant to express love, or we wanted to be shown love in a way that we weren’t getting.  For example, I would say loving things to my wife, but those words didn’t mean a lot to her.  I wanted her to use those kinds of words with me, but she didn’t speak that language.

For a period of time, fairly early in our marriage, I had to go to meetings every Monday night in another town for church, and she always wanted me to bring her something back.  I thought it was fairly pointless, as I was only gone for a few hours, but for her, it communicated love.  She didn’t want anything expensive or fancy – in truth, she didn’t care what the gift was – she just wanted me to be thinking of her, and bringing something back showed that I was.

One time, shortly before Christmas, instead of going to my church meeting, I actually drove to a different town where we had seen something that she really wanted, but thought she would never get. I made it there in time to buy it and get back home in the same amount of time that I would usually have been gone.  I even brought a little gift and had a bogus “what we talked about” answer for her, so she wouldn’t suspect anything.  I’ll never forget the shock on her face when she opened it on Christmas morning, and she still says it’s the best gift I ever gave her.

As I began to go down the road that led to our separation, my gift giving all but stopped.  Once we got to where I wanted to save the marriage, I began giving again.  Whereas before, I had given gifts just because I knew that my wife wanted them, I began learning to give more thoughtful, meaningful gifts.  I wasn’t only using her love language, I was really learning to speak it.

The gifts don’t have to be big.  While we were separated, I showed up one day at her apartment with a care package that contained a first aid kit, vitamins, and other health items that I knew she didn’t have since she’d moved out.  One day, after we were back together, she had an especially bad day at work, so I bought her some bubbles, sidewalk chalk, and a coloring book and we went to the park and played.

When she took the love language test again after we got back together, gifts showed up as her secondary love language.  Her new primary language was physical touch.  For Valentine’s Day, I bought an ebook that teaches how to give a one hour relaxation massage.  That combines giving of myself, physical touch, and quality time, my secondary love language.  She has also chosen to learn my love language, and now she gives me the gift of hearing the words I need to hear from her to feel loved and appreciated.

Independence Day

Posted: July 4, 2011 in Love and Marriage
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The restoration tour is all about setting things right and making them new.  It’s about healing and moving forward.  It’s really, in many ways, about freedom.  Freedom from the past.  Freedom from being held back by mistakes that were made.  And, mostly, freedom from the captivity of pain and sorrow.

That’s why it’s kind of neat that the Fourth of July, or Independence Day, is where things in St. Louis began for us, and where we ended up again this year.  Regret can be a cruel master, and sorrow holds so many people captive in a state of “what could have been.”  Once my wife and I were together again, we determined that we would break free from any hold the past had over us, especially when it came to those things that were truly important to us.

At first, I didn’t realize that there was anything about St. Louis that needed restoration.  Even during our separation, we still went, and it was still magical for us.  Things weren’t necessarily fixed when we got back home, but while we were there, it was still our special place.  In an earlier post, I wrote about the day in July with my daughter that was a major turning point during our separation.

In May of last year, while we were still living together, my wife had talked to me about wanting to take a weekend in St. Louis by herself.  I didn’t like the idea, but I wasn’t going to refuse her.  She said she wanted it to be a break for her from all the stress, and a reward for making it through another school year.  What I didn’t realize until later was that it was really a trial run at leaving me.  She ended up going with my sister, and I tried not to worrry about it.

After we’d been back together for a while and had talked through everything, we realized that we needed to take an intentional trip to St. Louis for restoration of those bad feelings and memories.  We didn’t do anything particularly different than what we usually do there, with one exception.  One of our regular stops is the Zoo, and within the zoo, the penguin exhibit.  My wife has come to love penguins because of it, and even if we only stay for a very short time, we always go see the penguins.

When we were raising the kids, we frequented Build a Bear stores, where you make your own stuffed bear or other animal, and it wasn’t only the kids who made bears.  The St. Louis Zoo has a Build a Bear inside, and you can make a lot of the zoo animals.  Naturally, they have penguins, and we decided that while we were there, we would make penguins to keep as a tangible reminder.  We named them, using nicknames that have developed out of our relationship, and carried them around the zoo to some funny looks from people who must have wondered where our kids were.

The last time we were at The Hill, I felt a twinge of regret when we passed by Mama Campisi’s, the restaurant where I knew my wife had gone the night she went without me.  As we were driving up this weekend, we had plans to eat somewhere else, but I kept thinking about it, and, even though it’s such a small thing, it bothered me that there was a place on The Hill that I didn’t feel good about.  The Hill is the most special place on the planet to us, and while I didn’t want to say anything, I finally did.  My wife immediately agreed that we should go there, so we went for lunch on Saturday.

Not only was the meal and the service excellent, but the things my wonderful partner and wife said to me, and the way she made sure to treat me the way I needed to be treated overwhelmed me with love and emotion.  She told me, “This place is ours.  I’ve only ever been here with you or your family.”  She reassured me that my feelings and our love was more important than any plans or agenda that we may have had when we left the house that morning.  I shed a few tears, both at the table and outside, and a lot of healing took place.

I know some of you reading this may think that’s all rather silly or even childish, but we are living the “happily ever after” dream that most people have given up on.  To have it, you have to be a romantic who believes in fairy tales.  You have to choose love and joy.  You have to choose to feel deeply and love lavishly, which probably is why children get it and most adults don’t.  Finally, you have to step away from the hold and the hindrances of a past that’s less than what you want your future to be.  That’s the kind of freedom we’re celebrating in our marriage this Independence Day.

Discovering A Home Away From Home

Posted: July 3, 2011 in Love and Marriage
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I’m having trouble wrapping my brain around the idea that it was only two years ago that my wife and I first spent a weekend in St. Louis. Before moving to Missouri, my only impressions of that city were taken while passing through on the interstates during family trips across the country.  It always seemed like a place I would never want to go on purpose.

Once we started living in southwestern Missouri, people kept telling us how much they liked going there.  When they heard that my wife was Italian, they would always talk about something called “The Hill.”  It’s an Italian community in the middle of St. Louis, where most of the businesses are still family owned and operated.  Even though I didn’t believe that we would like St. Louis, we figured that at some point, we better go find out what the fuss was all about.

It was exactly two years ago, over a Fourth of July weekend that we booked a hotel for a couple of nights and set off.  We quickly discovered that the St. Louis of my negative perceptions from the back seat of my parents’ car, and the real city are two very different places.  We spent a great weekend discovering that there is so much to love about the city, that we couldn’t imagine why we’d never gone before.

First of all, there’s The Hill.  I can’t really describe it to you other than to say that when you’re there, it’s like you’ve left and gone somewhere else entirely.  It’s the place where people like Joe Garagiola and Yogi Berra grew up.  There’s a sense of community that you just don’t find anymore in the United States, and the people there hold to so many of the old traditions. In the bakeries and shops, you’ll sometimes see three or four generations of family running the place.  The pace is slower, and people take time to talk.

The food, of course, is wonderful.  You can choose everything from a casual deli, to a fancy, full-course formal restaurant.  There are bakeries, Italian groceries, and much of the pasta, sausage, and other foods are still made locally, by hand.

Nearby is Forest Park, which is about 500 acres larger than New York’s Central Park.  It is home to many attractions and is a beautiful place to spend time.  Downtown is the river, where there is no shortage of things to see and do.  There is culture, entertainment, atmosphere, and a world of diversity to see and experience.

That first time we went, I wasn’t sure if we would really grow to love it as much as we have, or if it was just infatuation with something new, but before we even left to come home, we were already making plans to go back.  We had visited the St. Louis Art Museum and the St. Louis Zoo, had a picnic in Forest Park, and done the tourist thing around the Arch.  We’d had one of the most memorable meals of our lives at Charlie Gitto’s on The Hill, and we were all but ready to pack up and move there.

Since that weekend two years ago, we have taken at least a day trip to St. Louis almost every month.  As educators, we only get paid once a month, so it’s usually the Saturday after payday that we go.  We always eat on The Hill, shop for authentic groceries and foods that we can’t get at home, and spend time in Forest Park.  We always look forward to our time there, and we’ve not only never gotten tired of it, we’ve grown to feel more and more that it is a type of second home to us.

Even while our marriage was deteriorating, we would still go, and for that short time, we were always “us” again, and there was hope.  That’s why it’s so difficult for me to grasp the thought that it was just two years ago that we first visited.  That would have been during the period of time following my failures as a husband, but nearly a year before we separated.  I suppose that in finding St. Louis, we found something new that was only ours.  We were writing a new chapter of our lives that could have changed our marriage for the better, without having to go through the sorrow that we ultimately did.

When it came time for the restoration tour, there were some things involving our beautiful city on the river that needed to be taken care of.  Of all the stops on the tour, there may not be any more significant than these.  I’ll share them in tomorrow’s post.

Anniversary Week Part 3

Posted: July 2, 2011 in Love and Marriage
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The Friday of anniversary week, we left school and headed toward Tennessee.  Most of my wife’s family lives there in the Clarksville and Nashville area.  It was our destination for the conclusion of our nine day celebration.

I had known what I was getting for our anniversary for a couple of months, and there wasn’t any attempt at surprise involved. I had to wait until Sunday, though.  My gift wasn’t a thing to possess; it was an experience.

I have been a passionate Philadelphia Eagle fan my entire life and the Eagles were playing the Tennessee Titans that Sunday.  My gift was two tickets to the game.  Of course, my wife and all her family there are Titans fans, so that would normally have made her the enemy for those three hours, but remember, everything had changed.

Well, not everything.  She still cheered for the Titans, but instead of a smack talking rivalry like it was in the past, we both almost wanted the other team to win so that the other person wouldn’t feel bad.  We each wore our team’s colors, but we couldn’t really be on opposite sides in any serious kind of way.

On Saturday, we had some down time and we were hungry, so we headed into Clarksville for something to eat.  We were only two beers away from the t-shirts, and we knew there was an Old Chicago near the mall, so in we went.  That made three times in one week, two in Springfield, and one there.

I did talk some smack to the waiter, who gave it right back.  Our last beer was the “manager’s brown bag” choice, where they bring you a beer of their choosing in a paper sack, so you don’t know what it’s going to be.  He brought me a beer that was awful, and we’re both pretty sure he knew that, but we laughed about it and took it as all part of the fun.

We stayed with my brother-in-law and his family that night.  He’s the one who taught us about beer, and I’ve spent the same number of years trying to teach him about wine.  He bought the ingredients and I cooked pasta puttanesca for everyone that night.  It’s been a favorite of ours ever since I got the recipe from a chef in Sonoma, California a few years ago.  Later that evening, we used his backyard fire pit to make smores.

The next morning, we headed to the stadium and watched the Eagles lose badly.  It wasn’t the outcome I hoped for, but I was there with the love of my life, and at that point, I knew what it was important.  It wasn’t the score in a football game.  It was the love we had rediscovered and now were living.

You won’t find a lot of significance in most people’s 14th anniversary.  It’s not one of the “big” years, but for us, there has never been one bigger, nor will there probably ever be.  A few months before, we had gone to the edge and looked down.  During that week, it was all about having made a complete 180, and never looking back.  The confusion and the mistakes of the past were behind us, and it really was an anniversary that was much too big for just one day.

Anniversary Week Continued…

Posted: July 1, 2011 in Love and Marriage
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When we left St. Louis on the Sunday before our anniversary, my knee was in so much pain, I could hardly walk.  After the 10K and the costume contest was over, I limped back to the car and we drove back to the hotel to check out.  Normally, we would have spent more time in town, but since I was hurting so much, there wasn’t really anything to do but go home.  Our hearts were full despite the pain, and it was only the beginning of an anniversary week to remember and treasure always.

It took two or three days for my knee to settle down, but school was in session during that time, so we still had to work all that week.  We planned to go out to eat on Wednesday evening, but we didn’t have any real specific plans for a huge date night.  We really wanted the whole week to carry a feeling of celebration, so we planned to try to do at least something each day.

Old Chicago is one of our guilty pleasures, and we ended up going to the one in our city twice that week.  It’s pretty unhealthy and very high calorie food, but it’s one of our favorite places anyway.  We pretty much love everything they have there, from the appetizers to the pizza to the pastas.  They also have a great beer list.

My wife’s brother is a beer connoisseur (yes, there is such a thing, and they don’t drink Coors or Budweiser), and because of him, we got into drinking imported beer and microbrews.  Old Chicago has a club called the World Beer Tour that you can join, and throughout the year, they have a series of mini tours.  At the time of our anniversary, they were having the Halloween mini tour, where, if you try eight different themed beers during the tour dates, you get a t-shirt.  We wanted the shirts, so we spent too much time and money that week on beer and food, but we sure enjoyed it.

On Wednesday evening, we went to a Japanese steakhouse and sushi bar that my wife had been to, but I hadn’t.  She has liked sushi for a long time, but it took me a while to develop a taste for it.  We had originally planned that I would order an entrée off the main menu and she would have sushi, but we ended up spending the whole evening at the sushi bar.  The people preparing it are inside an oval that is ringed by the seats, and in between is a moat where little boats circle that they put food items on for people to select.  It was a lot of fun, and we both got stuffed, although I’m not sure I know what some of the things were that I ate.

I also gave my wife her anniversary present that day. I had bought it nearly two months prior and kept it hidden.  She has never really liked surprises, and she usually tells me exactly what she wants for Christmas, Birthdays, and so on.  I have to get creative to surprise her anyway, and sometimes I can pull it off.

She likes black onyx jewelry, and had been looking for a certain style ring for a long time.  She knew what it would look like, and figured that it must exist, but we had never found a ring that was exactly it.  One day, soon after we got back together, she came to see me at Macy’s and passed by the jewelry counter on the way to my department.  When she found me, she told me about a ring they had there that was the one she wanted.

I pretended that the price was more than we could afford and acted like I wasn’t really listening to her, but I bought it the very next day and hoped she wouldn’t suspect.  I kept it hidden in a drawer for about two months and never talked about it again.  She didn’t forget about it, and hoped all along that she would get it, but at least she didn’t know for sure until I gave it to her.

To find out what I got, you’ll have to wait and read tomorrow’s post…

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