Comes Round the Year

It's one of those times when I get nostalgic and read back through the posts from a year ago, two years ago, three years ago . . . Goodness, there's a lot more history than there used to be. I really should learn how to do a more manageable archive.

Somehow--the revolution of the earth around the sun likely being responsible--the duchy has arrived at seven years of existence. A result that has often been in some doubt, not because we might set off without each other, but because we might just drop dead from exhaustion simultaneously.

Rereading old posts, I wonder how I manage to sound so chipper and sure of myself. I don't have as much momentum as I used to, and I definitely don't know as much as I used to. Sometimes I feel like trolling my old posts. Life's a lot tougher than you think it is, youngster.

And yet . . . it's worth it, too. There's four wonderful people in the world who wouldn't exist apart from us. (It's hard for me to feel like I can take credit for that. . . I mean, it's not like we were really working at it . . . but we've at least done our best with the follow-through.) We've stuck it out through difficulties that have done in many other relationships--and grown closer through them. We still have someone to talk to and laugh with.

Maybe we know less, but maybe it's that less of what isn't so. Maybe we have less starry-eyed optimism, but we have more real experience to count on.

Marriage isn't safe or easy, but it's good.