Happy Anniversary to Us

Yesterday was TJ and my 33rd anniversary.  We spent the entire day alone together.  We did not go out to a fancy restaurant for dinner, we did not take a long walk barefoot on a white sandy beach or stroll the city streets in some far off country.  We did walk 4 miles on a rural country road in the drizzle, not as romantic as it might sound.  We were perfectly content to just hang out together at the farmhouse and do our fixing up and organizing.  The sun did not shine all day, very much like our wedding day 33 years ago! 

We were not in Italy like we were on our 30th anniversary.....

When I think back 33 years ago, we spent our first night in our very small, old, apartment before heading out on our honeymoon.  You could fit four of that apartment in this farmhouse!  We started out with not much more than a hope and a dream....some common sense, a good work ethic, an education, good families behind us, a sense of humor ( which has probably been one of the more useful tools in our marriage!) and love and respect for each other.  We still have all of these things and so much more!

TJ and I never came up here to the shore before we got married.  As a summer shore person for my entire life, I knew I could never marry someone who did not love it up here.  A trip to Amherst Shore is one of the tests when considering marrying someone, if they don't like it here, they are out!  But then again, who does not like it here?  I guess there have been a few.  Our first trip up here came at the end of our first year of marriage and I was pregnant with our first child.  We were nuts (naive)!  We flew to Boston from Baton Rouge, then got on a bus for the 18 hour (11 by car) ride through every small town and village between Boston and Amherst, Nova Scotia.  I still swear we were delivering the mail because we stopped at every outpost on the way.  My back was never the same after that ride for the rest of my pregnancy. 

The best part of the trip was when we arrived in Amherst and TJ looked at me and asked how we were getting out to the shore.  Oops, I forgot to make any arrangements to be picked up in town!  My bad.  This was in the dark ages before cell phones, or even telephones in cottages....what to do?  I called the corner store by our cottage and asked it they could go and get my cousin and give them a message to call us back or just come to town and pick us up!  The pony express!  My cousin got the message and called us back and came out to town to pick us up!  I have only found out recently what TJ was thinking during that long wait at the bus station in Amherst all those years ago.  First would be...."my wife is an idiot!"  second might be "What am I getting myself into?"  and finally might be "I have entered a time warp!".

I was a bit nervous on that trip.  It was my first time to come up here without my family, I was a married woman (yikes!) now and on my own.  I was also wondering if TJ would love this place that was so important to me.  Well.....he took to it like a duck takes to water, literally, because it rained 9 out of 11 days we were here!  And he loved the place!  If you can love this place in the rain you will really love it on those breezy, sunny, warm days.   So yesterday when we had the same weather we had all those years ago, TJ was as happy as ever.  He was doing the same thing he did that first rainy summer.  He worked on an old house, this time he owns the old house instead of working on someone else's house.  A lot has changed but a lot has stayed the same.  I'm glad he loves it here as much as "I do".