From the first anniversary page of the scrapbook. We’re married four months in this picture from September, 2004.

(Sunday Paper, Year VII, Issue 19)

Today, as it is every six years or so, is two special days rolled into one.

Many people (but for various reasons not everyone, which I am sensitive to and if you do or do not have someone to celebrate today know that I recognize that) are celebrating Mother’s Day, seeing as how it is the second Sunday of May.

But for Kathy and me, it is also our wedding anniversary.

The year we got married May 8 fell on the day before Mother’s Day.

Which means that in 2005, and then a couple of times since then, our anniversary has fallen on a Sunday, which means it’s a Mother’s Day anniversary.

I honestly thought I had written a Sunday Paper on our wedding anniversary before.

But I just did some research and those years were 2005, 2011, 2016 (two leap years!), and now, 2022.

And I didn’t start this iteration of the Sunday Paper until later in May of 2016. (I did write a nice anniversary piece in the old Sunday Paper but I do believe those words have drowned in the digital seas. I will need to look into whether I can ever recover them.)

So if you’ll allow me, today I’d like to spend a few minutes on those 18 years.

Back in 2005, as we neared our first wedding anniversary, I was student teaching and I was talking to a mentor teacher about possible anniversary gifts.

She mentioned something that a friend did which I can’t remember exactly, but I do remember that it spurred an idea in my head.

I fine-tuned it and ended up with something I am still doing all these years later.

I got Kathy a scrapbook.

Imagine that was the end of it? What a terrible gift.

But it’s not!

Each year I re-gift the same scrapbook (again, terrible gift if the sentence ended right there), filled with new pictures - highlights of our year together.

There are some recurring staples - family pictures, the annual Christmas card…you can get a sense from these couple of pictures, from our 10th anniversary page and our 15th anniversary page.

But there are also other aspects that make each year unique.

And each year as we go through all of the previous years we’re reminded of some of those things.

There’s her MBA graduation pic this year, and our home back at anniversary one when we first bought it.

There are vacations we took together, and overall the scrapbook provides a nice little recap of our 18 years of marriage (22 years together total, for those of you keeping score at home) and how our lives have shifted over the years.

There are also instances we might not want to remember.

That picture at the very top of the post is from September, 2004, at a family gathering - a birthday party for Kathy’s aunt.

After that party we went out with friends, and when we returned home found our apartment had been robbed. You can see a little yellow piece of paper peeking out from behind the picture - that’s a photocopy of the police blurb from the local newspaper that mentions the robbery.

Most are happy memories though, and some of the spreads are two pages, while others are squeezed onto one page…especially now.

Because, in a sign of how long we’ve been married, the scrapbook is running out of pages and I don’t even know how to begin looking for additional pages when I’ll need them. I think the store I originally bought this from has been long out of business.

It’s a fun activity for me to think about throughout the year - when something notable happens I’ll make a mental note to print a picture to throw in the scrapbook to fill out our year.

I keep it to myself, though.

Because one of the best parts is, every year I think Kathy forgets about the scrapbook for the most part.

So each year it’s like a nice surprise all over again.

What I’ve Been Enjoying

“Tourist History” - Two Door Cinema Club
“Days Are Gone” - HAIM
“Something to Tell You” - HAIM
Casino Royale
Quantum Of Solace
Tom Petty: Somewhere You Feel Free - The Making of Wildflowers
Kingsman: The Secret Service

Fun numerical quirk - “Something to Tell You” was the 56th album I listened to this year, and it just so happened to fall on 5/6. Not planned, I promise you.

Notes

*Since we’re celebrating Kathy today I should add one more time that none of the Boston Marathon accomplishment for me happens without her support. She cut into her Saturday mornings to pick me up from long runs, she took care of things at home while I was out for runs, and she took the girls along the course each time to cheer me on. I’m very lucky.

*And this was meant to be more of a love letter to her instead of a love letter to a scrapbook but, listen, I do tell Kathy how much I love her almost every day. The scrapbook really only gets one or two days a year to shine.

*And I don’t honestly know if she's surprised by the scrapbook each year. Maybe she pretends to be, and that’s her anniversary gift to me.

*It just occurred to me now to look up what the 18th anniversary gift should be. You know, like 25 is silver, 50 is gold - they all have something. 18? I’ll let you guess in quiz mode - answer at the end of the Notes section.

*The good news about all that marathon writing - whether you liked it or not - is that it gave me some time to build back up some creative ideas, so I’m pretty excited about the next couple of months of Sunday Papers. And other projects I’m working on. Thanks for the support.

*I will be writing more extensively about the variation on the ‘What I’ve Been Enjoying’ section I’ve been doing in 2022, but I do need to say that taking in creative work like I’ve been making myself do does help with the creative side of my brain.

*Again, if you’re someone who is relatively new to the Sunday Paper and you haven't already connected on social media, those buttons below will take you where you need to go. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram (the running Instagram, anyway…my other one is @jsucich and there’s not a ton of exciting stuff happening there) - Like, follow - go nuts. I appreciate it.

*Quiz Answer: Porcelain! Haha. We should celebrate with a new toilet.