200 months.
Another title for this blog entry could have been: the best relationship of my life
My first blog “Why not” which told the story about how I tumbled into gospel music ended with my husband. He picked up our story in the Guest blog #1. And this blog begins with him.
Ted Eric Dettweiler and I were married on December 20th 1997 – two hundred months ago. He will always have the one-up on me since this was his idea…and he was right.
This morning on Facebook I posted a status about 200 months and an “old” friend asked me via inbox why I count the months. Great question. I think we’ve all been in situations where counting off the days or months or years is a negative thing, like a prisoner counting the days until his release. On the contrary, for us counting the months since the day we were married is a positive thing. When I replied to my friend’s question with some of the things I decided to write in this blog, she replied “…it’s scary how many couples from ’97 are no longer”. For a millisecond I actually thought about counting how many…and…no.
Why do Ted and I count and celebrate monthiversaries? We adopted this idea from his oldest brother Steve Dettweiler and his wife Sonia. It is our way of cherishing each other and being intentional about building a GO(O)D marriage. Frankly my posts are also about putting good news out there…that despite the statistics, marriage can be great and it can last for more than a couple of months.
Interestingly enough, at the 100-month mark I was a voice student in the jazz program at Université de Montréal and that night my classmates and I performed (for marks!) in a small bar. On that night while I was on stage I dedicated the jazz standard “You’d Be So Nice To Come Home To” to my beloved husband who I had married 100 months before. Yes of course he was in the room since he’s my biggest fan.
Who knows? Maybe 100 months from now I’ll share what we did today.
[Ted has his own blog at http://dettweiler.ca/wp/]