Ten Year Check-In

Ten years ago this month my husband and I stood in front of our closest family and friends and publicly expressed our love and devotion and took vows of commitment.  The goal of the event was to establish a principal value in our world: our love was equal to (not less than) the love of any other married couple.  As I sit here in my office typing this blog ten years ago seems like a different time entirely.  It was a different time.  People stumbled over the vocabulary: "Do you call him your partner or husband?"

In 2006, our wedding in Austin, Texas was not recognized by the law of the land.  Most guests in attendance on our most special occasion had never experienced a wedding between two men.  The newness of the event was nice, since we could make up the rules as we went along without worrying about expectations.  We kept the guest list well edited; we realized at the time that we didn't have many close gay friends - the majority of our friends were straight, which is a fact that is (for some strange reason) still true today.  We served drinks before the wedding ceremony to ensure (have kidding/half serious) that our honored guests (of mostly straight people) could handle two men kissing after the "I do's".  In the spirit of Gandhi's "be the change you wish to see in the world" we held a fun wedding, and at the time we hoped one day we could get legally married.

As is true in life, I'm learning, things appear to be happening slowly and then they appear to be happening all at once!  Seven years after our wedding, in the fall of 2013, that legal marriage happened in Santa Barbara, California.  Our union was recognized by the law of the land, finally.

In the early spring of 2016, our twins were born in Austin, Texas.

And here we are...

It's been a very special ten years, and we are just getting started.  After ten years, my husband is still the man of my dreams and he still owns my heart, completely.

I am grateful.

My life is so special because we are standing on the shoulders of the men and women who lived before us and lived in a time when being true to yourself and loving who you wanted wasn’t always an option and came at a great risk.  If my husband and I had been born in a previous generation, then our life would have been different.  We know this fact, and we've done our part to keep pushing things forward for the next generation.  Isn't that the point of life?  "Leave the world a better place than you found it."