The Best Day of the Year – 16th Anniversary Edition

Today is my wedding anniversary. I have had the great fortune to be married to Jill for 16 years; we have come through many challenges together and every day I continue to see something new because of our marriage. We’ve come a long way since that cool, cloudy September day back in 1991.

I’ve seen articles recently about the state of marriage generally; it turns out that over half of the marriages that took place 25 years ago ended in divorce, according to a recent study of the matter. It’s almost impossible to make generalizations about such things, but one thing I’ve noticed is that of our closest friends, including those made here and from our respective childhoods, hardly anyone has been divorced. I don’t know if it’s a statistical quirk, but we and our married friends are beating the odds.

You could speculate endlessly about the reasons for it, but I think the most important reason is simple: Jill and I work at our marriage and we fundamentally see the world in the same way. We’ve changed since those days – I have long since dropped the Angry Young Man pose I so enjoyed in my youth and Jill has gained wisdom and patience over the years. What we’ve seen in our friends’ marriages mirrors our own experience; no matter what happens, our friends have been able to adjust to the inevitable changes that come throughout a marriage.

So tonight we’ll go someplace, have a nice dinner and perhaps a libation or two. And when I look into her eyes, I’ll gain yet another reminder of how lucky I am.