Nineteen years ago

We are old fogies and don’t do much to celebrate New Year’s Eve. It doesn’t help that I was sidelined with a migraine yesterday and my husband took an on call shift for the ambulance.

As we were laying in bed last night, I told my husband “I was a lot more fun nineteen years ago.” You see, New Year’s Eve is the anniversary of our engagement. I had moved to what used to be a small town outside of Dallas. Grapevine, Texas is not bursting at the seams.

We talked about the changes in our lives in these last nineteen years. So here are a few things we talked about out.

Nineteen years ago….. We didn’t have a little girl asleep in the next room who thinks her Daddy walks on water. She loves her Mommy, but adores her Daddy.

Nineteen years ago… Our sex life was very different. One of the biggest discussions that centered around this topic was the period in our lives when sex was scheduled and not the least bit romantic because we were going through fertility treatments.

Nineteen years ago… We had never heard of RAD, had not even thought about adoption, and just assumed we would be able to have children when we were ready. We spent more time trying to avoid getting pregnant, not realizing it was something that was never going to happen for us.

Nineteen years ago… I was a mere twenty years old. That’s only six years older than Sammy is now. I was actually on my second engagement (I broke the first one off to be with my husband) and was planning my wedding, living on my own, and making my way into adulthood. I can not imagine Sammy planning to get married (for the right reasons) in only six years.

Nineteen years ago… We lived in a small one bedroom apartment that was always neat and tidy. Now we live in a five bedroom home that is never neat and tidy unless there is a showing for us to sell the house.

Nineteen years ago… The thought of being a stay-at-home mom was a totally foreign concept. We just assumed that I would continue working when we had children so that we could afford a nice life style. We didn’t think that bringing children into our lives would mean that I could no longer work because of the needs of my kids and all the appointments and “extra” responsibilities that go along with parenting traumatized children.

Nineteen years ago… We were broke and my engagement ring was a $120 sapphire ring. Well, not much has changed. We’re still broke but for better reasons, I think. Paying child support for a child who can’t live at home, medical bills to help Sammy, and various other expenses incurred mean that we don’t have the life we’d like, but helping Sammy is worth it.

We’ve come a long way in nineteen years, and while there have been many ups and downs, and some rock bottom times, I wouldn’t trade my life now for the way things were nineteen years ago.

Photo credit – Our engagement picture from nineteen years ago, taken by my in-laws

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