10 Years Ago Today...

Life was a little simpler. Well, a lot actually. We had given ourselves over to the slow, slow pace of the Jamaican beach, reveling in water and sun by day and the piano bar by night. And in the middle of one  glorious afternoon, we got married.

We were so very young.

We had so many, many firsts ahead of us. First apartment together. First jobs. First home. First baby.... and then so many seconds... We have packed more happily ever after into ten years than we could have hoped for, and we were unabashedly hopeful.

We still are.

And the funny thing is, we thought, at the time, that we knew what it was to love unconditionally. We thought that those college years full of distance had taught us something about love, about each other, and about ourselves.

But somehow, the vows we said that day are more true, more deeply understood today than they could possibly have been at the time. Our intentions that day have been ever more fully realized every year, through sleepless, worried nights passing a baby back and forth; through long, exhausted evenings around a campfire; through patient negotiations of the minutia of our everyday lives. Even though we have both evolved more than either of us probably realize, we fit better now than we could have than.

And yet, how many firsts are still hidden away in the next ten. Right around the corner we'll meet our first son, and for whatever lies beyond, I offer up the same hope I carried to Jamaica ten years ago today.