Posts Tagged ‘Hope’

Back Out West To Old Dodge City

Posted: July 16, 2011 in Love and Marriage
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Driving home from Tennessee took the better part of a day, but the very next morning, we were back in the car heading toward Dodge City, KS.  We had lived there before moving to Missouri in the Summer of 2005, and we still had family and friends in the area.  The stated purpose of our visit was to see two of our daughters and my wife’s Mom and Stepdad over the Christmas holidays.  On a deeper level, we needed to go back there as part of the restoration tour.

It was while we lived in Dodge City that my spiritual problems really came to the surface.  I never wanted to live there, but my wife and I both felt that God was calling us to, so eventually we went.  We had a very difficult time there on many levels.  We were the victims of numerous property crimes, which isn’t particularly unusual with the gang problems that city has, but it was still frustrating.  My job became less and less satisfying as well, to the point that I seriously considered getting out of teaching and finding a different career.

A lot of people would say that if we were really doing God’s will, then we should expect to face obstacles and adversity, and that would be true.  What we didn’t expect to face was all of the internal problems and fighting that went on within the church that we were trying to work with.  There was sexual misconduct among the leadership, power struggles over who was going to be in charge, and way too much of people pursuing their own agendas.  Our family went through a lot of disillusionment and hurt during those years and, unfortunately, I blamed God for choices that people made.

When we finally left, it was bad for us financially in that we owned two houses in Kansas and hadn’t been able to get either one sold, but I felt that I was literally dying out there and something had to change.  I asked God to have grace and mercy on us and to let us try to start over.  I had good intentions when we moved, but I didn’t see things through.  Once we had lived in Missouri for just a short time, we went through the tornado and I really never recovered.

Last July, toward the end of our separation, I was going to visit my daughter, who lives in a small town near Dodge City.  My Mother-in-Law said it would be good for me to come stay with them, so I took that as a good sign for our marriage and I did.  They have a guest room in the basement of their house and that’s where we usually stay when we visit.  It was good to see everyone, but it was also agonizing to sleep alone in that bed.  Beyond that, it was terribly difficult being 400 miles away from my wife at a period of time when I had no idea what she was up to or if I would ever be able to win her back.

When we went there last Christmas, a lot of healing took place.  It was the first time we had been there since getting back together, so it was a celebration of more than just Christmas.  We were also rejoicing in all that we had overcome.  For me, it was wonderful to be back, but not alone this time.  It meant a lot to me that we also spent some time walking around and revisiting some of the places where we had really fallen hard and suffered a lot of losses in the years prior.  We can never get those years back, but we don’t have to live with bitterness and anger because of them.

Sour Grapes In The Midst Of The Sweetness

Posted: July 12, 2011 in Love and Marriage
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The day my wife and I got married was the happiest day of my life.  I will never forget what I felt when I saw her standing at the back of the church.  I’ll also never forget the friends, the reception, and the fun we had that day.  It was the perfect blend of fun and seriousness.  There were pranks and light moments, and there were solemn vows and songs of devotion.

The two biggest surprises for me both involved our car.  The first was that the guys had poured Rice Krispies into the air vents and turned the setting to high, so as soon as I started the car, we were showered with them in our seats.  Not only was it a fun shock at the time, but over the few months following, stray pieces of rice would work their way loose and come flying out at random moments, bringing smiles to our faces.

The other unexpected surprise was the reaction of other people to the “just married” writing and other evidence of our wedding that was all over the car.  We couldn’t afford much of a honeymoon at the time, so we just drove from Dodge City to Wichita, KS and stayed at an old fashioned bed and breakfast.  Everywhere we drove, people smiled, honked, waved, and gave us thumbs up signs.  Maybe it was the grins plastered all over our faces, or maybe people were just glad for newlywed couples, but it was as if an entire city of strangers shared in the joy of our special day.

After our separation, and when we got back together, those grins were all over our faces again, but we were in for another surprise.  Not everyone was happy for us or supportive.  We didn’t have decorations on our car to signal strangers that we had just been joined back together in marriage, but people that we knew, who were aware that we had been split up and had worked it out should have had even more reason to be happy for us, we thought.

Don’t misunderstand, there were many who were. I would say the majority of our friends and co-workers were happy for us and said so.  With that being said, there were those who blew us off, showed no happiness or support, and even withdrew from us.  We didn’t expect everyone to be all giddy with joy, but we did think that people would fairly universally rally around a story with a happy ending.  After all, the fairy tales all say, “and they lived happily ever after,” don’t they?

Maybe that’s where some of the problem comes in.  True love and a happy marriage is what people really want deep down.  But in today’s society, so many people have been hurt, abused, used, and discarded, that they’ve quit believing in that dream.  They’ve put up walls that they think are protecting themselves, and they are choosing to accept less than what they really want because they are afraid that they won’t ever be able to get it.

By being negative toward marriage, and congregating with other equally negative people, they try to insulate themselves from their own dissatisfaction with life and love.  When they hear of people getting married, their reaction is, “How long do you suppose it will last?”  When they hear of people splitting up and getting divorced, it reaffirms in their mind that there is no happily ever after, so therefore, they aren’t missing out on anything.

Those are the people who have a hard time with our story.  It flies in the face of their false smugness, and forces them to look at what they don’t want to see.  They won’t rejoice with us, because it would expose their own sorrow that they are trying so hard to deny.  They are jealous of our love, and they resist it instead of letting it inspire them.  Instead of letting our victory be a beacon of hope that shows the way to real and lasting love, they turn away and cling to their belief that love can’t be true.

I ache for those people, and I keep them in my prayers.  I so long to be able to share with others what God has done in our marriage, and what He will do for them.  The princess being rescued and the guy getting the girl, these are at the very heart of all romantic notions.  The reason they persist is that we were made to believe in and experience real love.  It is a part of our very make-up as human beings.  If you’ve found that kind of love, you’ll undoubtedly rejoice with us.  If you haven’t, don’t ever give up.  It’s real, and it’s for everyone who will fight for it with all their strength and never give up.

Running the Bass Pro Marathon

Posted: July 10, 2011 in Love and Marriage
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My wife asked me just within the last few days if I believed that a mid-life crisis was what started all of our marriage problems.  I told her I didn’t think so, but that we both had certainly had some strange behavior and done some crazy and uncharacteristic things around the time we each turned forty.

She had announced, back when she was about to turn 39, that she was going to run a marathon to prove that she wasn’t old.  Even though she certainly didn’t need to prove anything to anyone except herself, she spent the better part of a year training and, last November, she did in fact run a full marathon.  By that time, we had already been through our separation and were well into the restoration tour, but she had set her mind on doing this, and I had supported her the whole way.

The marathon was her thing, not mine.  I encouraged her and trained with her to some extent, but I never had any plans to run it, nor could I have because of my knee injury.  It was, ironically, while I was attempting to do a long training run with her that the injury occurred, so even if I had any thoughts of trying to run it up to that point, they ended that day.  I was happy to be her cheerleader for this event and nothing more.

The fitness center that we are members of announced a training program last Spring for people who wanted to run the Bass Pro marathon in the fall.  It was called the Galloway program, named after running guru Jeff Galloway.  The cost was $100 and we paid it and signed my wife up.  It started right during the time that our marriage was falling apart and it mostly involved training runs with a large group on Saturday mornings.

Soon after the training started, we separated.  There were many Saturday mornings that were pure anguish for me, as I would often pick her up from her loft, have her drop me off at the gym, and then she would take the car and go on to the place where her running group was meeting.  I was working out alone, while she ran with her group.  When she was done, she would come up to the gym and pick me up, and then there was never any certainty of whether we would spend any time together or have to say good-bye again.

After we got back together, and especially after my triathlon, she faltered somewhat in her training.  I was no longer training for anything, and we were enjoying our marriage too much to be as disciplined as we should have been for her first marathon.  There were a number of Saturday mornings that we just didn’t get out of bed. We would say that we would go together and make up the running the next day.  Sometimes we did, and sometimes we didn’t.

To say that my wife is amazing would be the understatement of the century.  She reached a point, about a month before the race, that she decided she was still committed and was going to do it.  One morning, when she was supposed to be running 23 miles, she felt good enough and decided to go ahead and do the whole 26, just so that she would know that she could.  That happened to be a day that she was scheduled to work a full shift at Dillard’s, so she ran the equivalent of a full marathon in the morning and then went to work.

Sign right before the finish line

The day of the Marathon, she was nervous and I was excited.  It was a beautiful day for early November, so the weather wasn’t going to be a factor.  Since I couldn’t participate, and I didn’t want to sit around for five hours waiting for her, I decided to volunteer at one of the intersections along the route.  That way I got to see her about half way through and give her some words of encouragement.

I brought my bike, and I figured that after I was done at my station, I would go try to find her on the course and see how she was doing.  I tracked her down at around mile 21 and she was in a lot of pain.  I stayed with her for those last few miles and talked her through it when her body wanted her to quit.  When she crossed the finish, it was an extremely proud moment for each of us.  For her, it was a huge accomplishment that not many people will ever achieve.  For me, it made the pain of all those awful mornings go away, and I was thrilled to step aside and let her get all the praise and recognition for what she had done.

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 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…

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

Posted: June 30, 2011 in Love and Marriage
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Our wedding anniversary is in October, and last year, we decided that one day wasn’t going to be nearly enough to celebrate not only reaching our 14th year, but all the love we had found in just the few months prior.  We began planning far in advance, and it just so happened that, while our actual date was on a Wednesday, there were events on both the weekends before and after that we wanted to do anyway.  The fact that they book-ended the week of our anniversary was just the excuse we needed to go all out.

Our anniversary week – which actually ended up lasting 9 days – began in St. Louis the Saturday before.  We were going to be in the Halloween 10K race that I wrote about yesterday, and it was on the Sunday morning before our anniversary.  Since it was to be early in the morning, and in St. Louis, we went up the day before and got a hotel room for the night.

We spend a lot of time in St. Louis, and try to go up there for at least a day trip once a month.  There is an Italian community there called “The Hill,” and it was what brought us to St. Louis the first time we ever visited.  We eat in the restaurants there and my wife, who is Italian, shops in the family owned grocery stores and bakeries.  It’s as close as you can get to being in the old country around here, and we both love it.

We also enjoy Forest Park, which is larger than New York’s Central Park.  It hosts the St. Louis Zoo, The Art Museum, The History Museum, miles of running and cycling trails, an outdoor skating rink in the winter, and much more.  Most of the attractions are free, and the scenery is very beautiful.

The day in St. Louis was purely for enjoying ourselves.  We picked up our race packets in the afternoon, but other than that, nothing was scheduled.  It was just a day for the two of us to spend in any way we wished. It was the kickoff day for the restoration tour’s week-long anniversary celebration, and we were spending it with the person we loved, in a place we loved.

The hotel we were staying in had a free hot food bar in the evening, so we took advantage of that even though it wasn’t the type of stuff we usually ate.  They also had an indoor/outdoor pool and the weather was actually nice enough to lay out in the sun for a while.  I had bought my wife a new bathing suit and was glad that she got to wear it.  She did get in a bit of trouble in the hot tub for calling other people’s kids “critters,” but no real harm was done.

In the morning, it was fun to put on our costumes and go down to breakfast at the hotel.  Naturally, it sparked a lot of conversation, seeing two people wearing huge quarters.  We got some pictures taken, shared a little bit of what was going on, and headed downtown for the race.  I knew that my knee might not hold up, but I hoped it would.

The race wound around downtown, went through the grounds of the Anheuser Busch plant, almost took us into Busch Stadium, and provided great views of the Arch and the Mississippi River.  Some of the costumes were fantastic.   There was a zombie, Two people dressed as peace and quiet (a hippie and a mime), when pigs fly (you’ll just have to imagine), Gumby, a praying mantis in a cage, and too many others to mention here.  We didn’t win any of the prizes, but we had a great time hanging around and seeing it all.

It was only the beginning of anniversary week, but it not only left us with a lot of great memories, it got us looking toward the future, as well.  For next year’s Halloween 10K, we’re thinking of either the tortoise and the hare (think a dorky looking turtle and a playboy bunny here) or Beauty and the Beast (my wife’s favorite Disney fairy tale).  Two days down, the rest of the week to go…

Opposite Sides Of The Same Coin

Posted: June 29, 2011 in Love and Marriage
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A few days after last July’s first friday art walk, I called my friend who had gone with us.  I suspected he had seen what I had seen that evening and that he would confirm what I was thinking.  I asked him over the phone, “Are you as confused as I am about why my wife and I are separated?”

“Definitely,” he told me.  “You guys are one.  You’re opposite sides of the same coin.”  I loved that phrase.  I actually told my wife that he said that soon afterward, but I didn’t think she had really paid any attention to it.   In fact, I forgot all about it until she brought it up during the restoration tour.

Right after we got back together, I completed my first triathlon, and my wife was training for her first full marathon.  Once the triathlon was over, I was looking for a new challenge, and we decided to train for some 10K races.  There were two in October – one in Springfield near our loft, and one in St. Louis close to our anniversary.

When we looked into the Halloween 10K in St, Louis, we found out that it’s not just a race.  It’s a fun event where many people run in costumes, there are props and Halloween themed scenes along the route, and a costume contest after the race.  We knew we wanted to be part of it, and we knew we wanted to run in costumes, but we didn’t know what to dress up as.

We kicked around different ideas, but nothing really stood out.  Then one day, my wife said, “Why don’t we go as opposite sides of the same coin?”  I was thrilled that she had remembered that and still thought about it, but I wasn’t sure how you could make a costume out of that.  I asked her, and as always, she had a great idea.

We cut out circles of cardboard and painted them silver.  Then she used a black marker and a projector at school to trace the features of a quarter on each, heads on one and tails on the other.  We used a Missouri quarter because it has the St. Louis Arch on the back of it.  We dressed in all black with the quarters attached to the front of our shirts.  We printed each half of the phrase on different sheets of paper, and attached them in sheet protectors to our backs.

We probably looked pretty silly and they were really unprofessional costumes, but we couldn’t have been happier with them.  We got people to take pictures of us in the hotel lobby and at the race.  It was a great experience and one that we look forward to making an annual tradition.  The only negative about it was that I injured my knee a few weeks beforehand, and ended up having to walk part of it and cross the finish line in a lot of pain.

Even that ended up being a blessing, because my wife refused to run on ahead and leave my side.  I kept telling her not to let me ruin the race for her, and she just kept saying, “We’re together.”  She stayed with me every step of the way, and we joined hands for the last few steps as we crossed the finish line.  Our times were not even close to competitive, but that didn’t matter.  Everything about the race was symbolic of what had changed between us since getting back together.

What had changed was everything.  It continues to amaze me that my wife is so different now.  When you’ve been with someone for more than a decade, you think you know everything about them.  You assume that you know how they will react, and what they will do at any given time, but everything was new and different.  It’s true that opposites do attract.  My wife and I are very different from each other, but it takes the two sides to make the one coin.

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