Five.

Forty five years from now, when the internet is soooo passee and everyone but me has forgotten about {So Wonderful, So Marvelous} we will be sitting at our lake house, watching our grandchildren run around playing freeze tag and kick the can.  Because even though we're old, we will have taught them these things.  Childhood needs these things, fresh air and games where you run around until you're sweaty.

Our friends and children will have gathered to celebrate our golden anniversary and my sister Lyndsey will be bitching because once again, she is helping throw a party.

We'll laugh and remember people at our wedding who stuck their head in our martini luge, the dancing, the celebration of it all.  They will pass around our wedding photos and laugh at the old fashioned clothes and smile when they see us dancing. 

"Look how YOUNG you were Grandpa!" will be exclaimed. 

And we'll speak nostalgically about the last fifty years because when you're old, you've earned that right.  You can wax all kinds of philosophical and no one can say shit.  I’m going to love that part.

Our children and their spouses will say things like, "What is the secret?"  But we'll just smile knowingly that there isn't a magic formula for making a marriage work.  It takes patience, laughter, kindness, sex, love, liking the person you married, and knowing that it will last.  And lots of hard work.

This marriage thing?  Not for the faint of heart.

Tomorrow, we are celebrating the first five years with a fabulous dinner out, just the two of us and a bottle of wine. 

Happy Anniversary Love, there is just no one else in this world I'd rather make out with.  I hope that the next forty-five years bring as much laughter and compromise and love as the first five.