So many things didn’t work out on our 25th wedding anniversary, but not the morning. Never the morning.

Maybe this is the secret ingredient to our marriage. I’ve never had high expectations. I married you because the thought of waking up with someone else undid me.

I played this scenario out in my mind when we were young. When I tried to let you go. Tried to date other guys. Nice guys who would make nice husbands.

I’d get through dinner. A movie. Maybe even midnight… but how could I not wake up with you?

I imagined meeting someone else. Marrying someone else. Opening my eyes in the morning to someone else, and then there was you.

Always you~

The someone I never got over. My lost love. My morning ghost.

So I married you. At 9:30 at night on a Tuesday at Chapel of the Bells in snowy Reno, I married you. My eyes still red from crying after you gave me your ultimatum: walk away forever or marry you this day.

So I stood with you in front of a man dressed like Elvis. You and I dressed like students having just come from our night class together at UNR. Not because I thought we’d last 25 years. Or be happy for even a day. Or that down the road, our beautiful, bumpy road, Jesus would save us. And save our marriage, too. But because I couldn’t face the morning without you.

And not once have I regretted seeing you in the morning.

I’ve regretted seeing you at night. Have gone to bed mad as hell at you. Have lain awake staring at a 12 o’clock ceiling, sick to death of you, but never in the morning.

You’re beautiful in the morning.

The morning of our 25th anniversary, we held hands, and prayed together with coffee steaming in our faces. Both of us grieving the death of your dad. Both of us bone weary raising five boys with our daughters grown and off on their own. Both of us without a gift for each other.

Only the gift of the morning.

No flowers, but you made me a fire. At 5:45 a.m., before dressing for work, you made me a fire as you do every winter morning. No card expressing your love. No shiny words or shiny jewelry. There’s never been a shiny thing about you. But you’re solid as a stone, and I love watching your muscles ripple when you split the wood that keeps me warm.

I brought you Taco Bell at lunch on our anniversary and we sat in a dirty Suburban with a toddler in his car seat and high school students stalking you like hound dogs. “Mr. Bicknell can I make up my test?” landed five minutes into our lunch.

“Go,” I told you. “Take care of your kids. Well have dinner together tonight.”

“Those kids can wait,” you growled, “It’s our anniversary.” But after ten minutes of watching that boy standing quietly beside your classroom door, I told you to go.

That night, things didn’t work out with our babysitter so we ate leftover ham with the boys bouncing in their chairs beside us. Honey ham my best friend sent in the wake of losing your dad. Then you did the dishes, and I bathed the boys, and we tried to watch a big-people movie we both really wanted to see, 12 Years A Slave, because we appreciate history together. But that fell apart too.

We ended the night with Bugs Bunny, and the boys between us on the couch. Our two-year old laughing on my lap in all the same places you laughed, and me thinking, Bugs Bunny really isn’t that funny.

I remembered the morning of our church wedding in May (we eloped in secret in February) when you made me sit on your lap and watch Bugs Bunny with you, and I thought the same thing on that day: Bugs Bunny really isn’t that funny. But I thought you were funny. My husband laughing at a silly rabbit cartoon.

One of your groomsmen passed out during our Catholic wedding ceremony, and you got drunk at our reception with me sober as a judge–your judge– thinking what have I married? Then you slept with your half-eaten double bacon western cheeseburger with guacamole instead of me because you just had to go through the Carl’s Jr. drive-thru after our reception. Me in my 1989 wedding dress with sleeves the size of Texas, and my maid of honor (my best friend since the 7th grade, the one who sent the honey ham) beside me in the car whispering, “Just let him get his burger. Things will be better in the morning.” And my bestie was right. The next morning at our bed and breakfast on C Street in our hometown, I couldn’t stay mad at you.

Fever and chills hit me during Bugs Bunny, and I went to bed sick as could be on our anniversary night, while you put the boys to bed by yourself.

I know both of us were disappointed about all that. But the following morning, coffee in hand, we talked about a trip somewhere just the two of us to celebrate our anniversary as I blew my nose again and again with the flu.

So until our trip somewhere, someway, someday, I’ll celebrate my mornings with you.