We have been doing quite a business of wedding flowers, mostly bulk flowers but a few full wedding party flowers. It has been fun, frantic and fantastic to help brides achieve their perfect day and while I help them dream and scheme and put together their flower choices, I am taken back to our wedding day many years ago. I have been thinking about that day a lot and well, today is our anniversary. Our 30th anniversary! Wow, you write it down and it seems like a looong time ago and yet it seems like only yesterday. You know, time flies when you are having fun.
Thirty years, whoa.... there were folks who said we wouldn't go the distance and in the beginning Farmer Tony told me I only had to do the first five and then I could opt out. But I missed the deadline and was in it for the long haul. We both being kind of on the stubborn side, decided to prove the naysayers wrong and stay the course, but also being frugal figured divorce was too expensive and besides we were too lazy to do any of the paper work. So here we are today, thirty years together, working together and have managed to get along.
Okay, here are the pictures, no laughing at the styles and remember photos in those days were not that great....
While working on the bridal flowers for the gals this year and looking at all the incredible ideas found on Pinterest, I kept thinking, it is about who you are marrying and a little less about the stuff. We have similar interests but are also completely different. Farmer Tony is very analytical, extremely focused and is very unemotional. Kind of a lesser version of Sheldon from "The Big Bang Theory" I am the creative, emotional, cry over movies and stories, overthinking, want to please everyone type of gal. I can get lost in the weeds of projects and at times will procrastinate on tasks that overwhelm me. Yet we both function well in society, our work and with our friends because we bring out those qualities needed in each other. I have helped Farmer Tony see beauty in music, art, plays, flowers and more. He can make a beautiful bouquet, a fine meal and is a great hugger. He is nurturing when I am sick and loving with our dogs. As for me, he helps me be so much more organized, listens to my wandering chatter, helps me focus and get stuff done and is a constant cheerleader of what I can do and will do. And we both make each other laugh.
When I look at these two kids, or as my parents used to call us teasingly (punk ass college kids), sitting in a convertible and ready to ride off into the sunset thinking they know everything and life was going to be a piece of cake. I think wait, you have no idea what is ahead. Blink and it is thirty years later and I realize we knew nothing at the time. Life has not been a piece of cake. It has been full of ups and downs, joys and many sorrows but we have weathered it together, side by side. We have endured job triumphs and losses, loved ones passing and health issues that make life challenging. But we are both doing what we really want to be doing. I was a school teacher and enjoyed it but really really wanted to be a florist or run a greenhouse. Farmer Tony was in finance/accounting and was the chief financial officer of a corporation but wanted out of the cubicle world and to work outdoors on the land. And here we are today, doing what we really really wanted to do. No, it is not an easy job, especially for two old folks, flower farming is really a younger folks kind of thing. But we will figured it out and find what works best for us.
So Happy Anniversary to us! Thirty years of sticking together, working hard and making each other laugh. On to the next milestone of 50 years. Yikes... another twenty more... blink and we will be there... together we hope!
" The most wonderful of all things in life, I believe, is the discovery of another human being with whom one's relationship has a growing depth, beauty, and joy as the years increase. This inner progressiveness of love between two human beings is a most marvelous thing; it cannot be found by looking for it or by passionately wishing for it. It is a sort of divine accident, and the most wonderful of all things in life."
~Hugh Walpole, Sr.
