It’s our wedding anniversary. Today Marie and I have been married for twenty years. I must have repeated those words to myself a hundred times today, trying to grasp the significance of the day, but I just can’t get my head around it. Twenty years. It doesn’t seem possible.
And then I look at my children, one of them on the verge of adulthood and the other seeming to grow an inch taller every week, and I think: Yeah, it’s possible. In fact, there’s no other explanation.
Marie and I said our vows in 1983. Ronald Reagan was still in his first term as president. Return of the Jedi was only two years old, and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan had just premiered the previous year. The space shuttle had only been flying for two years. The earliest IBM PCs were only two years old, and the first Macintosh wouldn’t arrive in stores for another year.
The Internet existed, barely — its predecessor, ARPANET, had just begun using the TCP/IP protocol. Microwave ovens and VCRs had only been available for a few years, and the first CDs had just appeared in stores. Cellular phones had been available for less than a year.
It was a different world.
I guess I can’t deny it. We really have been married for two decades. But it’s still hard to believe.