When Sean came into my life. He had long hair and big dreams of being a rock star. A few months later we went on our first date then he moved 500 miles away. The whole story of our long distant relationship is in this blog post I wrote last year.

I can’t fully express in words how greatful I am that I have Sean by my side. Are things perfect? No. Have we breezed through life together? Nope, not at all.  Do we talk, communicate, and work things out, support each other through the good times and the bad? Hell yeah, we do. Do we get frustrated with each other, put up with idiosyncrasies, bad habits and other annoyances? Yep, you betcha. Do we forgive each other when we screw up? All the time. There is nobody I’d rather have by my side than Sean McNally.

Today we celebrate being married for twenty-six years. I’ve been married longer than I haven’t. Having only two years of unmarried adult life, we grew up together, and that wasn’t such a bad thing. It’s worked for us, but not without hard work that we both have had to contribute.

During our nine month long distant engagement, we used write letters to each other, the old fashioned way, with pen and paper. This was before the days of internet, email, and cell phones. Back when a sixty minute long distant call cost a half day’s pay.

We don’t write letters to each other any more, though it would be a great idea.

I photographed a wedding last week. The couple included a wine box ritual in their ceremony. They wrote out their vows to each other and placed them in a wooden wine box with a bottle of wine. The tradition is to open the box on their anniversary date, share the bottle of wine and read their vows to each other again. Each year they will add another letter and bottle of wine for the following year, then continue this ritual every anniversary re-reading the accumulative letters of their words of love, commitment and affirmation. I imagine an exercise like this would help strengthen a marriage through the rocky times that inevitability come crashing through at the most inconvenient times. I was thinking of what to get Sean for an anniversary present, I might just go shopping for a wooden box and a bottle of wine.