14 Years

Yesterday, July 29th, Lee and I (sort of) celebrated our 14th wedding anniversary. It's funny, because only two days ago, while packing up books in the garage we are soon to leave, I found pictures from our honeymoon from Hilton Head Island the summer of 1995.

"Look how skinny we were!" I said to my sweetheart, who immediately replied with, "Look how much hair I had." But there was no enthusiasm in his voice.

We painted yesterday after Lee finished work, and I steamed most of the visible carpeted areas. We scrubbed all bathrooms and consequently, had no place to sleep last night. Our bed was covered in boxes to take outside and shove into the back of the Jeep the next morning, and we were too tired to move them back to the newly cleaned carpets. So we spent our anniversary sleeping on the floor, with Lee barely able to breathe since he had hurt his back carrying something heavy up the stairs of our rented home.

"Happy Anniversary!" I whispered before we fell asleep - which was hard to do since both our 9 year old and our 5 year old were sleeping with us in the living room. They on the couches, we on spread out blankets with the dog. Around 1am, a 5 year old fell off the love seat and onto our heads. He continued to sleep with his head on the ground and his feet on the couch. We had to reposition him back onto the love seat twice in the night. I had a headache this morning when I woke to drink hot Styrofoam cups of coffee with my sweetheart.

And while he showered, I had this thought...

I would much rather go through all that we have been through together (even before this present conflict) just to hold his hand for 14 more years. On the floor, with messy hair and a burping yellow lab, with children falling on our heads and calling out to us at all hours of the night...I would so prefer to have all that trouble just to have Leonardo for 14 years + forever.