June 25, 2014
* Note: I am way behind in posting about our time with the grandkids in Southern California, but I wanted to jump ahead and acknowledge the significance of today's date in our lives.
On this date in 1999, I married my best friend, Victor. It has been quite a journey since we said our vows at the quaint Farm Home Chapel in Corvallis, Oregon.
This passage that we chose to have read at our wedding seems even more applicable as the years go by:
The meaning of marriage begins in the giving of words. We cannot join ourselves to one another without giving our word. And this must be an unconditional giving, for in joining ourselves to another we join ourselves to the unknown. We can join one another only by joining the unknown.... Because the condition of marriage is worldly and its meaning communal, no one party to it can be solely in charge. What you alone think it ought to be, it is not going to be. Where you alone think you want it to go, it is not going to go. It is going where the two of you--and marriage, time, life, history, and the world–will take it. You do not know the road; you have committed your life to a way.—Wendell Berry, from “On Poetry and Marriage”
Here are just a few highlights of our life together the past fifteen years.
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| Irish Bend Covered Bridge--the place that Vic chose to propose to me on one of our favorite walks |
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| Our wedding day outside the chapel |
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| My sons Brooks and Jesse walking me down the aisle to give me away. |
We bought our first house together a couple years later in 2001 with plans to live in it the rest of our lives. Funny how things change. . . .
We enjoyed lots of good memories in this lovely place we called home for ten years.
Since our marriage, we have been blessed with four out of our five grandchildren. (The oldest, Chloe, was born about eight months before our wedding.) Hard to remember life without them in it!
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| Our first three grandchildren: Chloe, Luke and Isabelle |
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| Vic with daughter Mindy and son Todd |
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| A photo of the five grandchildren taken last summer in California |
In 2002, we bought a timeshare in Mazatlan, Mexico where we went for nearly every spring break and a few New Years until I retired in 2011. We loved our yearly escape to Mexico so much that we planned on retiring there with our close friends, Bruce and Sharon, before the economic downturn of 2008 changed our minds.
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| Our Pueblo Bonito Emerald Bay timeshare in Mazatlan |
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| Vic's happy place: reading in the pool at Emerald Bay |
Dogs have also played a big role in our life together. Two years before my retirement, we adopted Jetta, a two-year-old Portuguese Water Dog. After losing our two beloved Golden Retrievers, Riley and Phoenix, a few years before, we thought we were going to go dog free but our home just felt too empty.
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| Vic and Jetta on one of her first trips with us to the Oregon Coast |
This feeling of an empty home did not last long, especially after Jetta's litter of nine puppies a year later. Of course, we vowed not to keep a puppy.
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| Vic in the whelping pen getting a good dose of puppy loving |
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| Could you resist keeping this little soft adorable pup who became our Rico Suave? |
My retirement from teaching was one of the biggest life changing events in our marriage so far since it inspired the sale of our house and our decision to live full-time in a motorhome. With zero experience in any kind of RVing, we purchased the Big EZ and have spent the last three years fulfilling a dream to explore this magnificent country (and a bit of our neighbor to the north).
The joys we have shared these last fifteen years would have been greatly diminished without the many friendships we have made both in Corvallis and in our gypsy lifestyle in the motorhome. We have also been blessed to be able to share many special times with family both near and far as we have traveled this road of marriage together.
Here's to many more adventures and the continued fulfillment of our commitment to live a life of generosity, joy, and unconditional love.
