This is my valentine.
This picture is many years ago. This is what my lovely wife looked like just a couple years after I met her. It’s my favorite picture of her. It pulls my mind back almost 40 years. But, my trip back to our youth isn’t accomplished all at once.
Instead I travel back slowly. I start just a few weeks back, making shelves to hold her picture and that of our kids.
I slip back a little further to children’s graduations. A daughter from University of Utah surrounded by her own children and friends. A daughter from Pleasant Grove high school. Back a few months more. Eagle Scout projects. (The mother’s pin isn’t nearly big enough.)
Travel to hospitals to welcome grandchildren. One little girl so ill that she was life-flighted to Primary Childrens Hospital in Salt Lake City. She spent months in the Neonatal ICU. He’s home, healthy and happy.
Before that, travel to foreign lands to welcome home children.
There were sad moments too. The premature death of our oldest grandson, and a heartbreaking tiny casket carried lovingly in his father’s arms.
Times spent in courtrooms. Adoptions? Sure. But, some less happy times. Trying to help children make good decisions and correct from bad ones.
Travelling back further, there’s the birth of three or our children. How small our family seemed then. Large at the time, of course. Our children outnumbered us!
And back even more. To when it was just the two of us. Two crazy kids trying starting out in life. But, being together.
And before that? Fear. Fear that this wonderful woman, barely more than a girl, won’t say yes.
And that brings me all the way back to this picture. First meeting. Teenagers. Saying and doing teenager things.
Yes, I love this picture. Because I love the story. The long winding story that has been told and retold over the years and decades.
Happy Valentines day. Today and every day.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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