Lucky me

My darling wife celebrated her 59th birthday today.  Actually, the celebration is ongoing.

Unless you read my book, many of you don’t know how Madeline and Mike became Madeline and Mike.

I was married in 1984.  I was 24 at the time and thought I knew everything there was to know about life and love.  Silly boy.  Now I think it is criminal to allow people to marry before the age of thirty.  You are still changing in so many ways that it’s difficult to know what you are or what you want.

Needless to say, six years later I was no longer married.  And it was not the fault of the nice girl I married.  It was mine.  I knew exactly what I was getting into at the time.  I just didn’t realize it at 17, when we began dating, or at 24, when we married, that perhaps I wasn’t totally sure.

Our daughter Jessica was born in 1988 and that is something I will always cherish, but there were other good things too.  No relationship comes and goes without happy memories.

I then met and experienced love with a woman named Kathleen, who at the time was 16 years my senior.  Age did not matter.  The relationship had its up and downs over 7 years but for the most part I was happy.  I assisted in helping both of those relationships implode.  Looking back, which I realize is a dangerous thing to do, I could have been better.  In about every was possible.

Madeline and I began working together circa 1993.  I was her manager when she first came to work for us.  We became instant friends.  It sounds corny that we had a ,”connection”, but, we did.  We were both in relationships and we never, ever crossed any lines.  I left that company in 1996 and Madeline a short while later, and we stayed in touch, occasional lunches, etc…

When both of our relationships ended in 1998, she and I became a we.  The relationship started twenty years ago this Spring, and we married in 2002, now into out 16th year.  We have not had many ups and down.  They have mainly been ups.  Lucky me.

By my own admission I am a great husband.  I cook, I grocery shop.  I do laundry.  I take out trash.  I iron my own clothes.  And I am great at foot massage.  Lucky she.  And my wife, well, she outdoes me on every one of those.  Except she has never touched my feet and still owes me a pedicure from a Christmas present three years ago.  But if you’ve ever seen my feet you wouldn’t blame her.

But the main reason it works is we like each other…most of the time.  There are moments when I get on her nerves and those when she is twisting my last nerve (which isn’t really fair as I only have 2 nerves).  But we both, each of us, know that life without each other would not be much of a life.

We’ve been blessed with four children between us, and as of now, four healthy and beautiful grandchildren, Milo, Olivia, Remy, and the newest arrival, Matthew.

We’ve had health issues, and we know that as we age there will be more to come.  We’ve had financial hardships, but we persevere.  We’re fortunate to be surrounded by a loving family, great friends and mainly, each other.

We’ve often talked about moving, to Lake Placid, our, “home away from home”, or recently, to Canada.  People have asked, “How could you do it, just pick up and leave everyone you know?”  It wouldn’t be easy, but somehow, we know, that with just the two of us, we’d be okay.

I think the best thing we have in our favor is that we both grew into the people we wanted to be.  When you stop looking for the next thing you focus on who you are and more importantly, what you want.  I famously said, at my 55th birthday party, that I had everything I wanted and had achieved everything I wanted.  All I needed to do was ride it out, for as long as I possibly could.

Yes, we always want to keep evolving.  Getting lazy is dangerous.  But I know who I am and what I have.  And that is a lucky, lucky thing.

Happy Birthday Sweetie!  (not really necessary as she doesn’t read my blog anyway).  And, there goes that second nerve.