Forty-four

When we met twenty-three and a half years ago, it was love at first sight for me. Mari was twenty and a half, then. Today, she's forty-four. I gave her a deluxe NPR-listening apparatus for the kitchen this morning. Thanks to our kids, her colleagues and students, and Aunt Carolyn, by the end of the day, she had accumulated "enough chocolate to fill the Wells Fargo Wagon," as she put it, happily. We spent the evening watching Emilio, Nina, and Pablo rehearse for the musical "Winthrop and the River City Twins" (aka "The Music Man"), which debuts next Thursday. And tomorrow morning she defends her title as the reigning city champion in her age bracket in the Cougar Chase 5K. At the end of the day, the score is: Love at First Sight 23, Everything else 0.