More Time Travel

It happened again. Only this time, on purpose.

Mark and I celebrated our 15th wedding anniversary this past week. Our big gift to each other was a trip to Boston this summer. But since anniversaries that are divisible by five seem to be a bigger milestone, we also exchanged small gifts. Which can sometimes be the best kind.

One of the small gifts Mark got me was Hootie and the Blowfish's Cracked Rear View. Why? We aren't big Hootie fans. But in our world, Cracked Rear View was the soundtrack to the fall of 1994 - the year our little Malone family was born.

October 29, 1994. UT played USC that day. UT won. (We still live in Tennessee, so it looks like Tennessee is still winning.) Some idiot fired shots at the White House that day, which prompted them to close off Pennsylvania Avenue (in case you're ever on Jeopardy and need to know the date of that change.) Susan Smith had not yet been found out - that story was all the news on the drive down (and the drive back a week later, coincidentally, but for different reasons.)

Right after the wedding, we took a cruise. We had assigned dinner-mates - two other couples. One couple had been married for a while (the wife was a guard in maximum security prison - delightful) and the other couple was also newlyweds (we never figured out what the husband's name was - after the third "What was that? Say again?" it became awkward and we let it go - to this day, we refer to him as "Haaaayyyyyrrrrnnnngggg".) We didn't spend much time at dinner.

While we were honeymooning, a construction crew broke ground on our house. The one I'm sitting and typing in right now. We spent most of that fall and winter completely broke and smelling like wood and stain (two parts cherry, one part mahogany - the magical mixture). To this day, the smell of a can of minwax transports me right back to 1994.

Peyton Manning was a freshman that year. Mark and I went to one game - it was Parents Day and Archie Manning was down on the field with him. Now that he is THE Peyton Manning, I like to remember that at one time, he was just a kid playing football who wanted his dad to come be with him on Parent's Day. Makes him seem more like me. Except that I'm a girl, and I never played football. But you get my meaning.

We lived in a tiny two-room apartment. It was perfect for newlyweds. For about six months. Which was all the time we stayed there, so it was OK.

For Christmas that year, in lieu of gifts, we exchanged Christmas tree ornaments. Mark got me "Our First Christmas Together" and I got him the first in a series of commemorative baseball greats (The Bambino). We still exchange ornaments every year - the boys are now included - it's one of my favorite parts of the season. We now have so many specialty ornaments that we don't have room for the cheapo colored balls we bought that year to fill out the tree. No great loss.

I turned 24 a month after the wedding. Mark bought me an engraved jewelry box with my new initials. I still have it. It's now full of pictures, baby teeth, and cub scout badges. (I never was much of a jewelry person.) And I still love it.

And while all this was happening, Hootie and the Blowfish was playing in the background. Hold My Hand, Time, Hannah Jane - they all remind me what it was like to be young and newly married and completely clueless. But happy. Very, very happy.

And 15 years later, I'm still happy. Very, very happy.