My Sunday Feeling

This will not be a long post.  

Today marks the first anniversary of the marriage of the Deacon and I.  I guess I should have given more thought to it and composed a tome about the last year.  But quite frankly I didn't know where to start.  This time last year?  5 years or so ago when we first started seeing each other seriously?  The sheer hell that was last summer?

True story.  I ran into one of the young coaches out on the golf course.  He was getting one last round in before football practice started for real.

"How has your summer been Mr. Bowen?," he asked.

I'm "Mr. Bowen" to about half of them over there at Catholic High.  I'm still not quite used to that.  As far as I'm concerned "Mr. Bowen" is buried over to the VA Cemetery downtown. But what are you going to do?  

"Let me tell you Coach," I said. " I'm not buying a house.  I'm not selling a house.  I'm not moving a family here from Conway and I'm not living in a house with no furniture except a recliner, a bed, a TV and a coffee pot. I'm having one hell of a good summer compared to last summer."

If we got through last June without somebody getting shot in the front yard, I think the prospects for the long haul are really good.  

Should I write about the wedding ceremony itself?  That wouldn't be a bad idea except I don't remember much about it except Chris Riviere telling me a lawyer joke about an hour prior to the nuptials and folks applauding as we left the Sanctuary.  That's not true.  I remember my right foot falling asleep in my new shoes as we standing up there in front of God and everybody as the old saying goes.  

And I remember Jim Hathaway coming up to me at the reception.  He had noticed that I was not drinking.  He did not think this was advisable given the stress I was under and so he brought me a double bourbon on the rocks.  Jim Hathaway is a good man.

But really that's about it.  Maybe if I looked at the pictures it would come back to me.  Except I have no earthly idea where they are around here.  Which is not atypical.  

Talk about a blur, it seems hard to believe that a year has come and gone.  The kids will be leaving soon.  They have been here for most of the summer which has been interesting to use a word.  Sarah is headed back to the Middle East for a fellowship.  She will be gone until Christmas.  Joe will head back to Hendrix a few days after that.  He will be gone until he needs laundry done or his Mom's cooking.  Or money.  

What else should I write about?

Maybe this.  Soon it will be back to just the Deacon and me in this big old house up on top of the world.  Once it is no longer 10 degrees hotter than Hell, we will go back to sitting on the porch.  We like it here.  You can see deer in the woods across the street.  You can see the Arkansas River a mile or so to the north.  Joe says you can see the lights of downtown from his room upstairs.  I'll take his word for it.  I don't own a hazmat suit so I don't go up there.  

The Deacon is a bookish sort.  I am a "gin-ish" sort.  The neighbors walk by and stop to talk to her.  They merely tolerate me.  I think they can't figure out how M got stuck with the likes of a dyspeptic curmudgeon-which is the worst kind if you think about it-like me.  That's OK. I can't figure it out either.  But our porch is a good place to be. Our home is a happy one.

It's a good place to start the second year along with all the other years that are hopefully to come.  

I'll try to do a better job of paying attention from here on out.