The Thirty Year Journey

Jim and I celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary Monday. I took the day off school and we took a sentimental journey back to our roots. We walked around Isla Vista noting that the Bank of America, which was burned in the student riots in the 70s, was now an ATM, and the falafel stand,

the frozen yogurt place, the coffee place, the original Kinko's and every other sentimental building was gone. The woman at Starbuck's asked if we'd ever been to Isla Vista before, and we said that we'd fallen in love there 30 years ago. She said "Awww. It's so nice to know it's possible to find true love here." We walked on the beach, took in the view from the eighth floor of the library, and were amazed at how much it had changed. A few years after we got married we returned to campus and tried to fit in as if we were still students. Years after that we wondered if we looked like professors. Now we can't pass for either. We look like parents of students who had children late in life. I gave Jim a book I had made (a Snapfish photo book) and he cried. We had dinner at Enterprise Fish Company where we had shared so many meals when we were twenty-somethings, and really enjoyed being together. I'm so thankful for Jim, and for all the fun we've had together, and for what a great dad he is, and for how he's really been there for me in the hard times. I'm really glad I moved in next door to him in the summer of 1977. It's been an incredible journey.