The Mystery of Six in Twenty Four

022992. Cryptic digits tattooed on my heart rather than my skin. Six in 24. A joke for two that had to be explained to everyone else though we never let anyone in on the true secret.

Jan and I got married on Leap Year Day in 1992. We have had six anniversaries in 24 years of marriage. She accepted this timetable with the understanding she would get a gift per annum rather than per anniversary. I’ve kept up my end of the bargain.

I no longer write for a living or on deadline. If I did I would have steeled myself to produce this epistle on the actual date rather than letting it percolate 13 days past expiration. I wasted the opportunity to wrestle this subject to a blank page after my wife went to sleep on 2/28. Instead, I read reviews of Austin restaurants on Open Table, trying to find the perfect reservation for our sixth anniversary dinner.

Actions and ambiance speak louder than words after 24 years so I think I used my time wisely. I'll cover that anniversary dinner in a later post.

Our marriage was a Leap of Faith on Leap Day spawned by faith.

Jan’s leap was larger as she had to believe a 38-year-old unconfirmed bachelor would make a dependable husband. We had the fact our meeting was in church at West End Methodist to recommend us, but I don’t think she fully realized the circuitous route I had taken to get to that holy meet cute.

I had sown my wild oats and those of a couple of other guys as well. I dodged a college engagement and took my cues from country singers. I took Johnny Lee’s advice from my Gilley’s Days in Houston to look for love in all the wrong places until I realized Garth Brooks was writing my life as I had a lot of friends in low places in Nashville.

I had written a song line years before that now described me: “If your life starts fittin’ in a sad country song, could be you’re doin’ something wrong.”

When I had gotten unengaged from the high school and college sweetheart through my own fault, I had been counseled by David Baggett, the older brother of my best friend Harvey Dale. David said, “I’ll tell you about being a bachelor. If you can stand the loneliness, you’ll have enough good times to make up for it.” I took the advice to heart and was Good Time Charlie for about 16 years.

I lasted as a bachelor a lot longer than David or Harvey Dale or anyone else I knew. I bounced off the bottom in the deep water I had been swimming in and ended up where my mama said I should have been all along, church. Johnny Lee was wrong. Princess Charming was more likely to be in the right places and church felt right for the first time in my life. Church and I had never been properly introduced until I met Russ Montford at West End Methodist.

I remember praying sometime in 1988 for a wife and family. The loneliness was something I could still stand but no longer could come up with a reason to keep the rake and rambling torch burning. Still, God will test your strength of committment as he waited three more years to reveal Princess Charming.

Russ Montford was the minister at West End at the time and he had convinced me to serve on a committee to come up with ideas to make the first service more inviting. The two things we recommended was to start a half hour later and to have a small choir. Since I had helped recommend the extra half hour I felt obliged to drag out of bed to get to church for the early service no matter where I had been the night before.

In the “Baby Choir” I noticed a pretty blonde woman singing. I figured she was married like many of the attractive women in the congregation and was surprised to see her show up in my Sunday School class where I was the oldest living Young Adult. She came with Ann Thomas, a really tall young doctor from Vanderbilt. I managed to get myself inserted into her discussion group and discovered her name was Jan though I didn’t get her last name of Spears correct.

She didn’t come back for the next two Sundays. The second week I pondered if I knew Dr. Ann well enough to call her and ask how to get in touch with her blonde friend. I chickened out but was rewarded by Jan coming back to the choir and Sunday school that week.

We did the coy too cool dance for another couple weeks before one of us asked the other one out. There seems to be haziness as to who initiated. I asked but I may have been led to the question deftly, a technique that has defined much of the success of 24 years of marriage. I often have ideas which seem to be inserted magically into my head by a telepathic force. I’ve discovered they appear not too long after I’ve said no to a similar proposal from my wife first.

I’ll skip courtship as it wasn’t long by most couple’s standards. We met in October and she met my family Christmas. My family knew something was up as they hadn’t met anyone in about 18 years. Jan walked in and won everybody over as working a room is one of her major talents. By the end of the visit if we hadn’t gotten married my family would have adopted her and voted me out.

Fast forward to how we picked an inconsistent wedding anniversary. We had determined we ought to get married “sometime soon” but that was a respectable six months or so in the future in both our minds. Then I won a Bahamas Cruise at work in a sales contest. My company was CompuAdd Computers, owned by Billy I. Hayden from Austin, Tx. Billy I. was a good Baptist who would allow a winning manager to take a wife on the company trip but not a significant other or even a fiancé. If we didn’t accelerate our time table I was going to be cruising the Bahamas alone.

Cyndi Tierney is Jan's girlfriend from when they worked together at Vanderbilt. She took a look at the calendar and the departure of the ship and determined we should not miss out on the opportunity to get married on Feb. 29th, 1992. Jan has blamed Cyndi at disparate times during the last 24 years when I was not behaving, but overall Cyndi has taken credit for the master stroke of our anniversary date.

I’ll save the details of the wedding and honeymoon for another post in the interests of brevity.

It’s now I will count the ways I love my wife but Liz B. Browning did that much more poetically than I can. So I’ll use situational anecdotes as illustrations.

On our first date I asked what kind of food she liked and if there was a restaurant she wanted to visit. She suggested a Mexican Food restaurant despite being from Pittsburgh. She literally had me at Mexican. I suspected I might marry this girl. To loosely quote Mary Kay Place in The Big Chill, “After 15 years of dating you know in the first hour if there is any chance at all." I knew in that first hour.

On our honeymoon cruise, we rode down the elevator with a heavily made up women with fingernails about three inches long, weapons like Mr. Hinx in Spectre. Jan was appalled as this was her example of a high maintenance woman. She didn’t think the woman could do much of anything for herself with nails like those. Jan treats herself to manny/peddys but keeps her nails a respectable length, just long enough to literally make her point.

For the 6/24 anniversary, I figured we needed to go someplace special/expensive and was looking at trips to Cozumel or Acapulco. She came to me and said she hadn’t seen my Texas family in a few years and also wanted to go to Waco to visit the store of Joanna and Chip Gaines from her favorite show, “Fixer Upper”. Not many women would pass on a beach on the Mexican Riviera in favor of visiting Waco. TX.

In six anniversaries and now 24+ years Jan has been the most positive person in any room we’ve been in together. She is my perfect counterbalance as she pulls me up from my natural grumpiness. Her nature is to take care of everyone and it’s been a blessing to be one of those near the top of her list as I can report excellent care.

Next year will be a silver anniversary for 25 years, except we won’t have an actual anniversary as it won’t be a leap year. She’ll get a gift per the prenuptial agreement. Maybe a medal for taking a chance and putting up with me all these years. If a leap of faith was our springboard her patience has been the saving grace and foundation of our time together.

Did I mention she is a gift from God? He delivered on my prayer beyond my dreams. When I think of my wife and our relationship my heart runneth over beyond any prayer I could have conceived 24 years ago.