eight.

This past weekend was chock full of celebration. In addition to Paulie's birthday, Paul and I celebrated our eighth anniversary. Eight years. Sometimes I can hardly believe it's been that long since we decided to blend our families, already full with 3 little ones. In other ways, it feels like Paul has been part of my life forever, and eight seems like such a small number compared with the experiences we've shared.

Piazza Navona, Rome, 2005

As an ode to our eighth anniversary, Paul posted this fitting tribute on my Facebook wall:

I wanted to ferret out one of my favorite stanzas about deep, abiding love in honor of our august milestone. But all these children are so loud! I can't think straight. Perhaps sadly, perhaps appropriately, the only stanza I can conjure with any lucidity in this foggy-minded kinder-chaos is this, from Eliot's Burnt Norton.

Words strain,Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,
Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place,
Will not stay still. Shrieking voices
Scolding, mocking, or merely chattering,
Always assail them.

As I think about it, further down the stanza we do get this, which might work better initially, but ultimately ends up interrupted again by children. 

Love is itself unmoving,
Only the cause and end of movement,
Timeless, and undesiring
Except in the aspect of time
Caught in the form of limitation
Between un-being and being.
Sudden in a shaft of sunlight
Even while the dust moves 
There rises the hidden laughter
Of children in the foliage
Quick now, here, now, always -
Ridiculous the waste sad time
Stretching before and after.

There you go...eight years in a nutshell.

our simple little courthouse wedding, 10/06/2005

I rarely post photos of the adults in this family here on the blog, much less photos of us together. Here we are at the beginning, and, well...a few years ago. Because we're actually bad at even getting our photos taken at all.

2011, photo credit: my brother