Over the Road

My husband surprised me by the water tank at the end of Day 2 of the 2007 Komen 3-Day Breast Cancer Walk in San Diego, California after I’d walked 20 very slow miles with my daughter, stopping at every turn to nurse the foot that had been on the receiving end of a dropped suitcase the night before. I was hot, sweaty, limping, and swimming in self-pity. I stumbled over to the water tank because there was water with ice. I wanted to pack my bra with ice and then lay down and die.

I had no idea he was coming to San Diego. He’d told me a crazy story about going to Minneapolis with one of our sons to see the Packers play the Vikings. But what he actually did was take off driving from Milwaukee to San Diego as soon as I was on a plane flying there for the 3-Day. He drove through the night, slept in truck stops, and ate at little wacky diners along the way and when he got to Rabbit Valley in Colorado, he let our dog, BowWow, run with the wind like a real tough dog might. In some small town, he went to a fabric store and got a pink square of cloth to fashion a neck scarf for him. And then he pulled into San Diego and waited for me to see him standing there by the water tank, grinning and holding BowWow.

Life is full of the day to day and, in marriage, it’s the day to day that makes or breaks you. But it’s the memory of this guy holding this dog in the pink scarf at the end of a very long 20-mile walk that I’ll take to the grave.

Happy anniversary to us.