20 years…

Today marks our 20th wedding anniversary.  Truth is, although today is an official mark of time, we have known each other 27 years and been together 26.  Over half of my life. 

This day certainly gives room to pause and look back.  I remember our first meeting.  He was a total asshole.  I had rented a room across the hall from him, in Fred’s fraternity, for the summer.  Pretty smart on their end.  Rent out the empty rooms to single girls for the summer to make money for the frat.  Regardless of my first impression, we became fast friends.  I had never had such a best friend.  We fed each others thoughts, challenged each others opinions, listened to a lot of music and played lots of cards and hung out doing other extra curricular activities. 

I went off to London the next year for a semester and we wrote.  Fred was still my best friend after all, I had a boyfriend that I had been with for quite a while.  When I got back from London, it became apparent to me that not only was Fred my best friend, he was the person I always wanted to spend time with.  That has basically never changed.

We graduated college, took a 6 week cross country trip in a beat up old Toyota and returned to start our jobs and our post college lives in New York.  We found our first apartment in a day, typical of us.  We knew nobody in NYC and started to create a life for ourselves.  Fred decided, thanks to my Mom’s advice, "if you go to graduate school, you can write your ticket anywhere", to apply to graduate school.  He took off for U of P and I stayed in NYC.  It didn’t stop our relationship.

2 years in Philly just was another adventure in our lives.  Fred returned to NYC and we got married.  We bought our first apartment because we needed an investment.  I changed jobs, Fred started out as a young VC, I left Macys and started an interesting career path.  Four years later we had out first kid, Jessica. 

We moved out to Brooklyn and had Emily.  All of a sudden there were four of us and our incomes couldn’t keep us afloat so off we went to the suburbs.  I stopped working.  Fred started his own company.  I started to work again.  We had Josh.  Our lives were chaotic. 

Our financial situation changed and back to the city we went with 3 kids in tow at 8, 6 and 3.  Moving back to the city was hands down the best decision we have ever made in our lives.  The success of our marriage at the end of the day goes back to our friendship, mutual respect, the way we both make decisions, how we both love change and are always into a challenge, our love of music, food, wine and travel and being on the same page on how we raise our children. 

We have always had big dreams and are incredibly lucky that we have achieved so much.  The most important thing to us is our kids.  That is our greatest achievement.  We are one unit, a total partnership.  People who are close to us are probably more aware of that than anything.  It has been a helluva ride.  I am looking forward to the next 20…