Today . . . August 22 . . .  is our anniversary.
43 years.

How can that even BE?
How did those years go by so quickly? How can we be That Old? How did we manage to find each other and commit to each other – and be right about it – when we were so dang young?

(I also wondered if I could find a wedding photo that I haven’t shared with you all yet. And I did! Luckily, this one was on the Treasure Trove of Slides my dad found last year. Not a great shot, but kinda fun. And . . . Never Before Seen On This Blog.)

As I thought about putting together this anniversary post, I realized that over the years I’ve shared plenty of stories about Tom and I and our relationship. (15 years of blogging is a lot of anniversary posts, y’know?) I’ve told you how we met. I’ve told you about our long-distance relationship back in college and all the letters we wrote (and still have). I’ve told you about the daisy-proposal. I mean, really. I’ve told you a lot about our lives together.

But I don’t think I’ve ever told you about how our communication style has . . . evolved . . . over the years. So today – on our anniversary – I’ll share the way we talk . . . without talking.

Now don’t get me wrong. Tom and I talk to each other every day – even when we’re apart for some reason. But we don’t talk to each other much during the day . . . even when we are both hanging around at home together. We have a rather spread-out house, and we enjoy having our separate spaces in it. Tom works from his office downstairs. I dink around in my “studio” upstairs – or putter around in the garden. We run errands or have appointments or work out separately. We take naps (especially Tom; he’s big on napping). Tom plays chess. I write blog posts. So for much of each day, we give each other space and don’t get in each other’s way if we can help it.

But.
We also want to keep each other informed.

So we leave notes.
A lot of notes.

Usually, our notes are simply . . .  informational. Letting each other know where we are and when we left/when we might return. Requests to do something or to remember to pick something up. Noting that the dog has already been fed. That kind of thing.

Why don’t you just yell out that information to each other as you leave, you might be asking? Well . . . let’s just say that after 43 years of marriage, we’ve learned not to interrupt each other’s . . . work or focus/flow or workouts or meetings or a chess game or a nap, say.

Notes do the trick!

But sometimes, our notes are more . . . in the reminder vein. Because we are committed to not interrupting each other for unimportant details during the day, we make notes to ourselves. Y’know . . . to remind us of things we want to remember to mention at a later time. (When there isn’t work or focus/flow or workouts or meetings or a chess game or a nap in progress.)

These notes are almost always . . . very cryptic and pretty funny when we find them later.

We also text each other.
Yep. While we’re in the same house at the same time.

This is a great example of an in-home text conversation between Tom (hanging out in the lower level) and me (hanging out in the upper level) over a few days in early July. We could go find each other, of course, to relay such information. But our own text shorthand works, y’know? Information communicated! And no extra steps.

(FYI . . . Tom sends me the little chess emoji – which I realize you can’t see against the black background of my phone screen – when he is going to play chess for awhile.) (And we couldn’t go out to the patio for drinks on July 3 because JoJo – who generally loves to join us – is terrified of fireworks and won’t go outside. I didn’t want you to worry about JoJo.)

After a full day of spending time on our own, we do come back together each day for a long catch-up conversation and time to reconnect. We walk JoJo together in the afternoon. We sit on the patio (or in the living room; it’s weather-dependent) for a drink together before dinner. We share a meal.

Life is good.
Talking. Even without talking.
You figure out what works . . . in 43 years!