Just A Couple of Kids

They were just kids really. Barely able to vote, barely able to drink. Nineteen and twenty-one, chasing each other around the car park laughing, her on his knee flirting, both of them so charming, so fresh, so young. His teenage long hair straight and silky enough to entice her to reach out and touch it before thinking. Sitting close enough in a car that their barely brushing knees could ignite a wild flame of excitement and desire.  The shy pinkie fingers in the movies, so close, so close, the intensity of non-touch. The hands that finally clasped at the top of the nature trail at Cornalees. Sprawled out on a blanket outside, lying head to head, staring up at the clouds on a rare bluesky day, both silently thinking, "This is different. This time it's different."

They had so little knowledge of the grown-up world, yet there was a wisdom there, a seriousness beyond their years. When his first careful, thought-out "I love you" was followed with "I love you properly... I want to spend the rest of my life with you", he had considered those words long and hard before uttering them.  When they acknowledged that marriage involved more than fiery feelings and longing and more than even love itself, but compatible directions, goals, plans, and values, there was something a little less childlike in the works. But they were still children.

And when love and marriage involved huge life changes and personal development that took them from the young people they had been into the grown-ups they were about to become, they fought for each other anyway. They recognized that the person they married had grown into someone else, but they decided to accept each other no matter what strange new people they became.  They grew different but not apart. They grew independent but together.

They waded a lot of muddy waters and plowed a lot of snow. They stretched on warm, sunny beaches and strolled on cool, cloudy days.

Today, they snuggle close as they gaze into the horizon, wondering what the future holds, but they are so in love, they are not afraid.

Today, they look back on twelve years together, eleven years married. They smile at each other. In a way, they are still really just two kids with so little knowledge of the grown-up world. But they are together, and that's all it takes to make them happy.

'Til death do us part..

... or the fights over the remote.

Tender moments...

...and kill each other moments.

Partners in crime...

...partners in life.

But no matter what...

...I'll always dance with you.

Happy anniversary. xx