A Tribute to 25 Years

When we met, I was 15 & getting ready to start my sophomore year at Dallastown High School in York, PA, and he was 17 & getting ready to start his senior year at the same school. 

When my girls each hit 15, I looked at them with my head cocked to one side & couldn't believe I was that young when I met my husband. 

When they each hit 16, I thought back to my 16 year-old self walking in my house to show off an engagement ring, committing my heart to this young man, and wondering why my Dad was so up-in-arms... 

When my oldest reached 17, I thought, "Married?? Wow, she looks so young."

I was one month shy of my 18th birthday when we got married, much to the consternation of my parents. Oh, our wedding had been anticipated, to the extent that August 5, 1988 had already been engraved on the inner rim of my waiting wedding ring; yet that's not the date we got married. (That's a story for another day).

We dated for two and a half years before getting married and had already endured a year and a half separated by long distances while he was in the Marine Corps & I was finishing high school.

We'd lived in those days for daily letters & old-fashioned phone calls. 

When we married, I moved almost three thousand miles away to join Marshall in 29 Palms, CA, where he was stationed. I still remember getting off the plane  & the balmy air hitting my nose for the first time. But I remember crying, too, for missing everyone & everything I'd known. 

We spent the first two and a half years of married life out in that dessert. My cats chased a scorpion through my family room once, we found beetles as big as tennis balls, and I almost walked into a huge coyote on my front porch on my way out to work. We ate a lot of eggs & Dinty Moore stew back then & spent a lot of our "extra money" on renting VCR tapes & Sega Genesis games (esp Blades of Steel & Zelda) I loved it there.

Yet when Marshall's four years were done in the Marine Corps, we headed back east to Baltimore, where we lived in the city for the next nine months. 

A job change led us to Monroe, MI, where I had Maegan in May 1992. One short year later, after we'd moved back to PA to be closer to family, I lost a second pregnancy at twenty weeks. Our first son is buried in Prospect Cemetery in York, PA. 

Marshall started law school at Widener & I was going to York College working on my Nursing BS degree. In the midst of all this, we had Morgan in August of 1996. It was a crazy time... both of us in school, buying our first home, a preschooler, a new baby, and then...

Montie joined us in June 1998! My brood & I hunkered down with this thing called Marfan Syndrome. At first we barely survived the weekly trips to Johns Hopkins, hospital stays, learning how to suspend drugs to make his medication, breathing treatments, PT, OT, learning about aortic dissection & it's warning signs, learning to put hard contacts into a six-month- old's eyes & finding them when they spontaneously popped out, being diligent to put the back brace on for more hours than not, and on and on~ All the while trying to just love on everybody the way a Mommy & a Daddy want to. 

Slowly, we found our way, began homeschooling, became experts on all things "Marf", moved twice, built a couple pools, got gym memberships, gymnastics, basketball, book clubs, ballet, park days, soccer practices, more PT & OT sessions, Boy Scouts, and life kept moving along at break-neck speed...

...until it all stopped on March 19, 2009. I wasn't sure we'd survive when Montie passed away. It hurt to breath, hurt to leave the house, it hurt to wake up & have to "remember" what we were dealing with wasn't a bad dream.

Thanks be to God who sent us angels on earth to feed us, wash our clothes, share the memories, let us cry & helped us laugh. People left their own families & children to help us through, to get us groceries, helped us gather for a celebration of Montie's life, and stayed with us after...

Four more years have happened. Our girls have gotten older, and somehow, almost surprised, we look at them in awe: smart, beautiful, funny, witty, compassionate & loving with deep hearts & old souls. 

In the blink of an eye, we're here 25 years later, and we wonder at us...

March 5, 2013 ~ Happy 25 Years to Us!