My son got married today

[NNadir]

44. My wife has never really forgiven me for our wedding.

After about 15 years, it became something of some amusement, but for a while it really bugged her, more because of the dynamics of her family than anything really about me.

We were stuck in blizzards in Lake Tahoe, she twisted her knee skiing, and I wasn't entirely sure how to put the required chains on the rental car.

We were running out of time, waiting for the roads to clear, but finally we got out, her in a leg brace. We found an open chapel; the pastor there was drunk, no flowers could be brought on but we had some plastic flowers, and an instant camera which produced pictures 100% of which had red eye.

But we got married; our license we'd obtained when landing in Reno passing through Carson City. We got back to our skiing Condo, and she said, "forget it pal," about wedding night traditions, since her knee was hurting with any motions.

The marriage, though, has been wonderful and long lasting.

My father in law who had used a special Italian-American expression to let us know how he felt about us marrying - "I'm not paying for the wedding!" (which I finally understood when watching Moonstruck - but paid for an elaborate fancy wedding for my sister-in-law. (My father-in-law later healed our relationship, and I miss him greatly since he died.)

I think my sister-in-law's marriage lasted maybe ten years; the love in that marriage, fancy wedding and all, was gone well before that.

After many decades, I'm still very much in love with my wife, and the only thing I ask of her is to let me die first, because I couldn't live without her.

In those rare times our wedding comes up, I point out that it is much better if the wedding sucks and the marriage is wonderful than it is the other way around. Now we giggle about it.

The most beautiful thing in my life, by far, is my marriage, and my life has been filled with other beautiful things, but above them all comes the decades with the woman with whom I tied the knot under very sloppy haphazard conditions.