It was 45 years ago today...

On Saturday June 30th, 1968 I became Mrs. David Yager. That sounds odd to our feminist-inured ears now, but it used to be how married women were referred to in print. Well, I am Mrs. David Yager. Although neither of us were christians at the time of our wedding, God knew His plans for us, that He would make one person out of two very different people. Mr. and Mrs. David Yager.

We were married in the town where David's parents grew up and where his grandmothers still lived, mostly because, since neither of us had any church connections, the pastor of his grandmother's church was the only pastor that either of us had any acquaintance with, and for some reason we agreed that we wanted to be married in a church.

Maybe the idea of being married in a church was his mother's idea. After all, we were getting married because she proposed and I accepted. Actually, the first time I ever saw David I knew he was the one I was going to marry. I distinctly heard God tell me that at the time. David has never believed that, mostly because I wasn't a christian when we met, but that didn't mean that God couldn't speak to me, or that I couldn't recognize His voice when He spoke so plainly.

Anyway, it took a few months (three? four?) before David proposed, but when he actually popped the question we had both just smoked a joint, and I wasn't exactly in any condition to answer appropriately, so I put him off. By the second time he asked me, I had gotten the idea that marriage was apparently old-fashioned and unnecessary (the hippie movement had just started) so I suggested that we simply live together.

Soon after that we went to dinner at his parents' house (I was still living in an apartment with my roommates) and his mom asked me what I planned to do over the summer (we were both still in college). I told her - I must have been stoned at the time - that he and I planned to buy a tent and live in the foothills. In her wonderfully delightful way she said "oh, you don't want to miss out on having a real wedding!" and I said "You're right! How do we do that?" and that's why we ended up married instead of just shacking up.

When we went to get our marriage license his father had to come with us to sign for him because David was under the legal age of adulthood for males (21). Since the legal age for females was 18, I was able to sign for myself, having turned 18 a few months earlier.

Our wedding was relatively small and lovely. The reception was held at David's grandmother's mansion. At the end of the reception we changed clothes (I had bought a suede miniskirt for the occasion), piled our friends into our brand new Chevy Suburban that David has just bought for $3000 cash, and went to the Haight-Ashbury. After hanging out there for a few hours we dropped our friends off and headed for the swankiest hotel in San Francisco, where someone (David's father?) had made reservations for us. We were completely out of our element, but enjoyed the one-night stay and the next morning drove back to our new house in Davis where we found all our friends asleep on our living room floor. The local cannery was hiring for summer jobs and since our friends had been living in dorms during the school year, they had no place to stay after the dorms closed...except our house.

Looking back, we both agree that it was only by God's grace that we managed to stay married, given such an inauspicious start. We had no idea how to be responsible adults - in the years since, we have often spoken of how we raised each other. We had no idea how to love one another, how to show affection - neither of us had parents who were role models in that regard, nor were there any other helpful influences in our lives to teach us. Everything we learned about being husband and wife we learned the hard way...the very hard way.

But what adventures we had (and continue to have!) And what blessings God poured out on us (and continues to)! And what depth of love we found!

Happy anniversary, mi querido...tu eres el regalo mas precioso que Dios me dio.

This is a photo of us at the renewal of our vows when we entered the Catholic Church in 2010.


Here we are with our son Matt and his wife Julie on our way out to dinner yesterday to celebrate our anniversary and his 41st birthday (he was born on our 4th anniversary).