Our Anniversary Month: the early years.

In the beginning:

Twenty one years ago, we met in a group introduction on a tour of the department at my first day at work.  My position was in the chairman's office as one of the administrative assistants; he was in the lab on the other side of the building working on his fellowship.  As a single mom raising my young son alone, we had a good little life together with our dachshund, Buttons.  After 6 years of working part-time jobs, sewing costumes at night for a local high school theater; substituting in the kitchens and driving buses for my son's school system, I got a temp position at UAB in the Cardiothoracic surgery department.  After several other short assignments, I finally ended up in the Pharmacology department where I met my knight.

There was no way that I could remember everyone in that department, so about 2 weeks later he came into the office looking to find out how much vacation he still had for the holiday break.  He came in quietly and just said, "Hi, I need to find out how much vacation I have."  Silence, waiting for a name, I finally said, "And you are??"  "Oh, yeah, Doug".......  Needless to say, we were off to an interesting start.

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Twenty years later, we still do not communicate perfectly and there are times when we simply can't connect, but we still plow though the tough spots and get to the other side smiling and loving each other.