{"id":3504,"date":"2022-07-14T19:32:37","date_gmt":"2022-07-14T23:32:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gardnercampbell.net\/blog1\/?p=3504"},"modified":"2022-07-16T13:04:44","modified_gmt":"2022-07-16T17:04:44","slug":"43-cheers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gardnercampbell.net\/blog1\/43-cheers\/","title":{"rendered":"43 Cheers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today my wife Alice and I have been married forty-three years. We greeted each other with a hug this morning, as is our wont. After we wished each other a happy anniversary, Alice leaned her head toward mine and said, “Nevertheless, we persisted.”<\/p>\n

And in fact, my friends, that’s what she said<\/em>.<\/p>\n

So tonight I salute our persistence, and I publicly state, not for the first time and not for the last either, that I am a very, very lucky man indeed.<\/p>\n

Pictured below is a scene from early in our marriage in which Alice’s loving gaze carries just a hint, just a casual warning, of the exasperation I was no doubt busily eliciting at that very moment.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I would like to take this opportunity to apologize for whatever I was doing, or about to do, in the moment pictured above. Still, she is<\/em> adorable, as I’m sure you’ll agree.<\/p>\n

Here’s another photo from our salad days, when we were about to make the second big move of our young lives: from Charlottesville and graduate school (and the dissertation I had become expert at not writing) to Chapel Hill, NC and Alice’s dazzling one-year-and-a-summer progress through a two-year Masters of Library Science degree program.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

And here, earliest of all, is Alice holding a cake made for her bridal shower. The cake reads “Three Cheers for Alice and Gardner.”<\/p>\n

\"Cake<\/p>\n

Today, it’s forty-three cheers for us. A cheer for each year.<\/p>\n

And here’s to many more.<\/p>\n

It takes some gumption to share a life for a long time–or at all, for that matter.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, we persisted.<\/p>\n

And I hereby declare: Gardner loves Alice. Still, and always.<\/p>\n

Happy anniversary!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today my wife Alice and I have been married forty-three years. We greeted each other with a hug this morning, as is our wont. After we wished each other a happy anniversary, Alice leaned her head toward mine and said, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3510,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.gardnercampbell.net\/blog1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/3-cheers.jpg?fit=%2C&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4bHwM-Uw","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gardnercampbell.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gardnercampbell.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gardnercampbell.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardnercampbell.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardnercampbell.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3504"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardnercampbell.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3504\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3519,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardnercampbell.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3504\/revisions\/3519"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardnercampbell.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3510"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gardnercampbell.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardnercampbell.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardnercampbell.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}