Relative Something

During the last year that I lived on a farm, when I was an 8-year-old boy, the bus that picked me up for school also picked up 9-year-old Cyndie Friswold from a neighborhood 1-mile to the north. Little did I know, riding that bus together back then, that our lives would eventually intertwine and lead to sharing 20 acres of woods and pasture in the beautiful countryside of southwest Wisconsin.

We didn’t know each other back when our families lived so close to each other. I didn’t really know her when we first met as teenagers. We fell for each other a short time after that first meeting, but never really dated exclusively during those high school years. There were plenty of spans of time when we were separated by physical distances during the years prior to getting married, which, in hind sight, just might have served us well for the times like last year, when Cyndie was in Boston.

I certainly didn’t expect that we would also end up sharing back ailments. For a few years now, Cyndie has been struggling with knee and hip pain. There are a variety of issues at play, but we both figured the primary problem was an arthritic hip. One doctor opinion she received while in Boston served to support our theory.

Since returning to Minnesota, Cyndie has been accompanying me on my morning walk and the follow up exercise sessions. Recently she visited a local doctor to get a confirmation of her hip-joint issues. That resulted in a surprise. She was told it wasn’t a hip problem or a knee problem, it was a back problem!

Yesterday that diagnosis was confirmed by a back specialist. She has the classic symptoms of a herniated disc impinging her L4 nerve. We will be sharing our workouts to build core strength toward taking pressure off of our aging discs.

We’ve come a long way together, from that shared bus route, to our similar back ailments. We can hardly wait to get to our next shared adventure, on our new property in Wisconsin.

Today is September 19th. Thirty-one years ago today, Cyndie and I were married outdoors on the grounds of the Noerenberg Gardens on the shore of Lake Minnetonka, in Minnesota.

I wanted to have a sunrise wedding, but since that wouldn’t be appealing or convenient for guests, we compromised and made it 11:30. I got to have it in the morning, and the rest of the stakeholders were able to live with a middle-of-the-day ceremony.

The weather that day turned out to be a classic warm and sunny September day, which was a relief, because every day for the week prior had been rainy.

I don’t remember much in the way of specifics from that day, but one story I have often told is about the music. My friend, David K., and his then wife, Sue, had written a special song, just for us, for the event. I remember that hearing the song during the ceremony was one of the more emotional moments for me.

Weeks later, after we had returned from our honeymoon and were settling into a regular routine, I had occasion to ask David for a copy of the lyrics. He said that he would look for them. We did not have any recordings made of the ceremony, so the only version I had of their singing our song was in my memory. In time, David reported that he could not locate the lyrics.

The song was written exclusively for us, performed once, during the ceremony, and never again. Nothing recorded, and nothing written remains.

Seven years after we were married, we spent our anniversary in the hospital for the birth of our son, Julian. It was an incredible way to make this date even more special for us.

Cyndie and I coordinate buying a joint gift for each other on our anniversary. One year, we bought a Dyson vacuum. That’s true love, there: showing your love by buying a home appliance that is more expensive than you are comfortable spending.

This year we bought each other a tractor. Our love keeps growing.