A long, long time

My parents are awesome. They celebrated their 27th wedding anniversary last night. At home. Grilling steak and drinking wine.

I sooooo want to be them one day. It's funny how I could not get out of rural Nebraska fast enough when I was 18. And then at 22 how I scoffed at the idea of moving there for graduate school.

Now, YIKES, I'm going to be 24... and I'm thinking it would nice to have the luxury of grilling a steak, drinking a bottle of wine- outside- in the summer. Miles away from pavement, from noise. The dogs don't have to be fenced in nor do the doors have to be locked at night.

Or maybe I'm just a little homesick for my family. After all, I do hate winter. And in Nebraska, you get a good 7 months of it.

And I will bring it up again. 27 years. The older I get, the more amazed I am at their stick-to-it-ness. I see marriages collapsing around me... but I see my friends getting married just as frequently. Some are doing it for the right reasons, some for the wrong. (And that's all in my own opinion... for whatever it may be worth.) It seams like something so earnest and simple, like what my parent's have- is so rare. My mother assures me it's the hardest work in the world keeping everything going- but the most rewarding. So in their 27 years of traveling the world, having children, racing motorcycles, planting gardens, and living mortgage free-- they have found some sort of secret I think Americans are looking for.

It's my favorite fairytale. It's my favorite thing to believe in.