For our 30th wedding anniversary, I decided to do something I’d never done before.
I knitted my wife a wedding dress.
It sounded ridiculous when I first thought of it.
But by the time our anniversary reception began, people weren’t just laughing at the dress.
They were laughing at me.
Then Janet stood up, took the microphone, and said something that made the entire room go silent.
Even now, years later, I can still remember the look on everyone’s faces.
Janet and I had been married for nearly thirty years.
We’d built the kind of life that didn’t look remarkable from the outside.
Work.
Bills.
Quiet dinners.
Family holidays.
Arguments about whose turn it was to take out the trash.
Three children who grew up far too quickly.
Marianne, Sue, and Anthony were all adults now, but I could still remember carrying each of them when they were babies.
People usually described me as quiet.
Reliable.
The guy who fixed things without expecting praise.
Janet had a simpler description.
“Husband.”
