Matthew Osborne
It is strange to look back at the last 20 years, because a startling paradox exists. It seems like those two decades went by in a snap of the fingers and simultaneously, I cannot remember what life before that was like.
On March 8, 2003, I married Samantha Sinclair in a country club ballroom in Lake City, Fla. We were supposed to get married outside, but rain was in the forecast, so we punted to the full inside wedding and reception.
I felt like Sam is the only person who has ever really gotten me, if that makes sense. We had our rehearsal dinner in a wing joint, complete with a hot-wing eating contest that I am sorry to say predates everyone having a magic video camera in their pocket.
At the wedding, we had the Florida-Kentucky basketball game on at the bar and I drifted over to try and catch the end. Then I heard a muffled announcement from the other room. “Now it’s time for a special dance with the bride and groom,” the deejay said. Whoops, gotta go, fellas.
There are a lot of men reading this right now who would say, “Wow, my wife wouldn’t have gone for any of that!” And you’re right, your wife wouldn’t have. But mine did, so there.
Another paradox comes when we look back at photos of us from early in our time together. She still looks great, and I have … let myself go, is maybe the best way to say it.
When we go anyplace that requires you to be 21 or older, Sam still gets carded, because she looks young and beautiful. They just wave me on through as everyone in our party laughs at the overweight, obviously way-over-21 bald guy.
“Stupid perpetually hot wife getting carded,” I would inevitably grumble ironically in a Homer Simpson voice.
“Better than the other way around,” one of our friends reminded me. Well, yes, I suppose it is. I have frequently posted pictures of Sam on Facebook, to her dismay and embarrassment, with the attached phrase, “Is my wife hotter than yours? I don’t know your wife, but yes.”
I met Sam in a newsroom, which is frankly where it feels like I have spent most of my life. If I did not meet a woman who can tolerate someone like me in a newsroom, I would have been living these last few decades on my own, since I am incapable of any social functions whatsoever. Having a brilliant journalist wife was frankly my only chance for lifelong companionship.
But mostly, when we are not in a newsroom (rare as that may be), most of my memories are just about having fun together.
Luckily for me, I have been privy to a million exchanges like this one from the other day at the Cows Come Home festival in White County.
“The band just played ‘Kryptonite’ and it was pretty good,” Sam said, referencing the Three Doors Down song from the year we met. “It was bluegrass Kryptonite, so it was a little different.”
“But does bluegrass kryptonite take away Superman’s powers?” I responded dryly.
She tried hard not to laugh at such a ridiculous dad joke, but she failed.
I think it’s the little things that make a happy marriage special, as Robin Williams pointed out in “Good Will Hunting.”
When you spend every day with someone, going to sleep next to them and rising with them at every sunrise, they see you at your best moments – and also your worst.
If someone can stick by you in those worst moments, the best ones will be that much sweeter. And that, to me, is the secret of long life and happiness with someone.
Anyone can love another person when everything is going great. But can you love someone when they are at the bottom?
Can you resolve inevitable differences and disagreements to find common ground?
If so, you might be married for a while.
We will all have ups and downs through the years, and people change over time. There is no way either of us is the same as we were on that day in 2003, but as we have evolved, and so has our marriage.
But we all have to grow with time, and that includes the way we interact with others, most importantly your partner in life.
At the end of each day, it still needs to be about having fun being together. I don’t remember what it was like to not wake up next to her and I do not want to revisit that scenario ever again.
We made it 20 years and I have tried to be a good husband. Maybe I’ll get a little better at it over the next 20.
Matthew Osborne is the editor of The Northeast Georgian. Reach him at 706-778-4215 or editor@TheNortheastGeorgian.com.