Our 7th Anniversary

Rereading that last post, it almost sounds like our vacation sucked, but that's just work filtering through and tainting my perspective. We had a great time, the most "quality time" we've had together since...hell, Spain in 2000, right before Isaac was born?

I was thinking about the past 7 years the other day, and what's changed since July 18, 1998:

1) Bill Clinton was President and was somewhere in the process of being impeached for the whole Monica Lewinsky psuedo-scandal. George W. Bush was Governor of Texas and netted $14 million from the sale of the Texas Rangers, a nice profit from his $600,000 investment...with borrowed money!

2) The first Gulf War had still not been officially declared over, and I was still in the NJ National Guard.

3) A month after our wedding, I was on the Nuyorican Poets Café's only National Poetry Slam Championship team, and had just started running a little bit louder a couple of months before that.

4) It had been just over a year since Batman & Robin had crippled the Batman movie franchise, seemingly forever, and several years since I'd last bought a comic book.

5) I'd never been to Mexico, Spain, Virginia, Texas, California, Vermont, Rhode Island, Chicago, Worcester, Minneapolis, Pittsburgh, Seattle, or Washington, DC.

A whole lot of other things have changed, not the least of which has been myself. Despite being pretty sure I'd found the right person, I was far from sure that I was ready to get married at that point and our rocky first year certainly gave enough reasons to believe I wasn't. But Salomé believed I was ready, and sometimes someone else believing in you is enough to push you over the top, allowing you to do things you didn't think you were capable of. I have no doubt that I'm a better person today because of marrying her. Better, healthier and happier.

In many ways, seven years is a long time. I've now been a husband longer than I've done anything else consecutively, besides being alive. At the same time, in the big picture, it's barely a drop in the bucket.

Happy Anniversary to us, Salomé. Love you. So much! ;-)