I love my husband. More than I did when I fell in, first lust, then love, with him forty-eight years ago. We were so young, headstrong, and sure of ourselves. We didn’t think about how getting married a year after we met would impact our lives, our families, or our future. We wanted to be together. And back then, even in the midst of the hippie free love era, we didn’t want to give in to the urges we had, we wanted to be a permanent couple. We wanted to belong to each other. So we ran away to elope on a hot June day. But no one would marry a nineteen year old boy and a sixteen year old girl. I ended up living with his parents while he lived in an apartment until my parents sent the papers for us to legally marry.

It was a warm, sunny, Sunday afternoon in August of 1971 when we married at a small church in Mill Valley, California. The reverend wasn’t happy about marrying two young people, but we made it clear if he didn’t we would find someone who would. Between Sunday services, we met at the church along with his parents, brothers, a friend of mine, and the reverend. In a span of about ten minutes, we were joined together as husband and wife. It was peaceful, and the only music was provided by the nesting sparrows outside the refectory.

After a few required signatures, photos, and a handshake from the reverend, we all went back to his parent’s house. They were, naturally, not in a party mood, so the Mr. and I changed into our jeans and boots, jumped on the Harley and headed down Miller Avenue to the local Jack in the Box burger joint for a meal. We rode over the Camino into Corte Madera and back along the back roads to Mill Valley. Later, we drove into San Francisco to the Hyatt for our wedding night. And that is all I have to say about that, other than we were both very happy, very in love, and very compatible. It was a beautiful day.

The next day we loaded up the Harley with our camping gear and headed to the Sierra Nevada Mountains to do some panning for gold for our honeymoon. It was a blissful few days, filled with laughter and the joy of knowing we were meant to be together forever. Eventually, we had to go back to the real world and face life as new adults. School, work, scrambling for money, paying bills, all that went with that set us apart from our friends our age. At the same time, we still had fun just being a young couple in love.

Years rolled by, children came, struggles came and went, we lost our oldest son, and we gained our first grandchild followed by more. Like all couples, we had our years of falling out of love and getting lost in the minutia of life, but we always found our way back to each other. And here we are, forty-eight years later, still married, still in love, and we still have that spark that brought us together all those years ago.

I love my husband. More than I ever thought I would. I don’t know where the years went so fast, but I know we lived every last one of them together. God willing, we will have untold years ahead. Who knew a ten minute ceremony would lead to eternity?