Coming up on 49

While we're on Oak Island in September with Mimi, Tim, Eleanor, Jack, Sherry and John, Bern and I will celebrate our 49th anniversary.

One short of 50.

But we've known each other longer than that.

We met in introductory Latin class in high school (Amo, Amas, Amat). I was a Senior and she was a Freshman. I was 18 and she was 15. I was taking Latin because I had applied to Shimmer College (now part of the University of Chicago) and they required a year of foreign language. The only language taught at Gary High School was Latin.

I didn't go to Shimmer and I didn't learn much Latin. I need to remind you I grew up in a very rural part of southern West Virginia. There were 99 people in my graduating class. I rode a bus 13 miles, twice a day, to get to high school. These were the coal fields. Both our fathers were coal miners--Bern's until he retired, mine until after WWII when his lungs wouldn't let him go back inside the mountains.

We dated that year and whenever I was home for three years of college. Then in 1964, she joined me at West Virginia University and we were again senior and freshman. I went to Cambridge to Harvard Divinity School the next year and then in September of 1970 we were married and went back to Cambridge together.

I was 23 and she was 20.

And here we are, together and settled and joyful, 54 years after we met. We have spent all those years--not always easily--together.

Together.

I can't imagine a life I could have lived without Bern. I really can't.

I've spent 3/4 of my life with her.

She is my life.

She really is.

What a joy!!!