“Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.”
— Antoine de Saint-Exupery
I remember when I first met my sweetheart.  On one of our earliest dates — lunch at Chi Chi’s restaurant — the service was a little slow, and we sat across the small table from each other, fingertips touching, and gazed into each other’s eyes.  There was an instant, one of those immeasurable flashes of divine light that forever after is a part of who you are, when I looked into his eyes and saw his soul.  The connection that was formed in that micro-moment forged a bond that sealed our future.  Within a year, we were married.  To say that our courtship was non-traditional would be an understatement.  Most of our dates included my two children — ages 14 and 7 — and his son — age 5.  Joining our two groups would be a challenge.  We knew this from the start; and somehow when we talked about putting us all together, the words, “Krazy Glue” always seemed to be a part of the conversation.  When we heard the term, “blended family,” it conjured up memories of the Bass-O-Matic commercial on Saturday Night Live.

We were married on Pearl Harbor Day — December 7th — in 1985.  Our first weeks were spent in the house I had rented for my gang, as we spanned the gap between the sale of Mark’s little home and the availability of the one we would share as a new family.  Those first weeks made some good memories, but it still felt as though Mark and David were just in town for a long visit.  Then, on Valentine’s Day in 1986, we packed up two households and moved to neutral turf.  Today marks the 25th anniversary of the launch of our family.
February 14, 1986 was a memorable day.  We were expecting the arrival of Mark’s four brothers from upstate New York.  They would be our manpower for the move, along with Mark and our son, Max.  Instead, an ice storm blew through and stranded our moving company.  We were on our own.  Local friends volunteered to pitch in, and the move was on — completed by two men and four teenage boys.  I remember being sick as a dog, which turned out to be the first sign that our son, Daniel, would arrive in late September.  Between bouts of nausea, I would stand at the door, read the labels on the boxes, and give directions to the rooms where they belonged.  With two fully functional households to combine, the supply of boxes seemed unending.  I felt as though I were in some bizarre rendition of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, and I remember wondering more than once just what I had gotten myself into.  We had to be crazy to think that we could pull this off!  At last, all the furniture had made its way into the house.  At long last, the moving truck was empty.  Our friends headed for home, we did our best to mop the slush and mud from the floors, and congratulated ourselves on being wise enough to make the kids’ beds our first priority.  We had assembled them first thing in the morning so we would be sure they would have a place to sleep at the end of moving day.  We herded them upstairs and pulled out the bag I had packed with pajamas and toothbrushes.  It was then that we discovered our day was not over.  Our strong and willing teenage movers had dutifully hauled those dozens of boxes to the second floor and neatly stacked them on the beds in each room.  It took another hour to stack the boxes in corners and tuck the kids into bed.

We learned a lot about the life we would share on that moving day.  We learned that our plans might not always lead us in the direction we thought we would go.  There would be unexpected storms that would require us to regroup and use our ingenuity to attain our goals.  We would need endurance.  Sometimes you think you’ve done a great job and arrived at your destination, only to learn that the boxes are stacked on the beds.  It is good to discover that even when you are tired, love will let you encourage one another to go the extra mile.  We also learned that even at the end of an exhausting day, the kids will jump on the beds the minute you leave the room.  This might have given us a clue about what lay ahead; but in spite of it all, we ended up adding four more children to the mix.  As I reflect today on the “St. Valentine’s Day Massacre of 1986,” I realize that the important truth I have learned since that day of beginnings is that in spite of all the surprises that have come our way, there is no place I’d rather be and no one I’d rather be with than here in my home with my sweetheart.

It was a magical gift we received that day at Chi Chi’s, in the moment when his eyes revealed the depths of his soul; but the gift of that moment truly became evident when we were challenged to stand side by side and look outward together in the same direction.  The miracle that bonded us in less than an instant joined our love in such a way that wherever we looked together we could share the deep love we now could bring to our world.  Sometimes, to this day, when I have a moment to gaze into my sweetheart’s eyes, I still can see the depth of his love; and in the midst of that love, a mirror shows me that my own love is the same.  I used to think that being in love meant feeling warm emotions when you are with your beloved.  I now know that “being” in love means letting the love you share surround you and move through you and be the foundation of all you do together.  It is a wonderful thing to “be” in love with another.  My, how we have grown.  Together.