Friday, October 01, 2010

Happy 6th Anniversary, Mrs. Quickie

My 6th wedding anniversary is on Sunday, so it feels like the right timing to publicly re-proclaim my infatuation with my wife.

Our wedding weekend -- held in Amelia Island, Florida -- was both awesome and appropriately football-oriented, given her family's Florida fandom. (And mine!)

The wedding itself was on a Sunday. The day before, everyone watched the Florida-Arkansas game (early wedding planning initially considered a group trip to the Swamp to watch the game, but the timing just didn't work out). After an amazing rehearsal dinner put on by my parents, there was a post-party where everyone -- Northwestern buddies and Gator in-law posse alike -- went bananas as Northwestern beat Ohio State for the first time in forever.

One of my favorite details of the wedding remains one of the items in the goody bag we gave everyone when they arrived: Custom "stadium cups" (my wife collects jumbo-sized sports-arena stadium cups) where we replaced the typical season schedule with key dates and locations from our relationship: The home opener was our first date; "homecoming" was when we moved in together; the obligatory end-of-season game at Hawaii (where we had our honeymoon).

It is fairly typical to owe your spouse some of the most core things of your life: Kids, making a home, emotional support, friendship.

In my case, I have the unique experience of owing my wife my sports fandom. Without her, there is no Florida as the center of gravity of my fan existence. Who knows what I would have thought about Florida's success the past few years? Who knows what I would have thought about Tim Tebow? (There would certainly have been no Tebow blog.) My closet would have two dozen fewer T-shirts.

Occasionally, I allow myself a "Twilight Zone" moment where I picture how things would be had I met and married someone else... who was a fan of another team. (In this admittedly odd fantasy, for some reason the girl is always a Baylor fan.) I'm sure I would still love college football, but I suspect I wouldn't have the same kind of life-defining allegiance to a particular team. Six years into our marriage and nine years into our relationship -- meaning nine years into my Florida fandom -- I mostly can no longer imagine my life without the Gators.

And I most certainly cannot imagine my life without my wife. That kicked in about nine years ago, too.

There will be some sort of celebratory dinner out in the next few nights (pending babysitter availability), but we know it won't be tomorrow night.

We will be sitting at home. She will be wearing her "lucky shirt." (I have yet to find a permanent replacement for 3 years of wearing a Tebow jersey to watch the game.)

And we will be watching Florida play Alabama.

That feels like the most appropriate way of all to celebrate.

Happy anniversary, Mrs. Quickish (nee Mrs. Quickie).

-- D.S.

Update: So here is the post I did last year, for our 5th anniversary -- a much more prolific essay about her and marriage rooted, in part, in fandom.

1 comment:

bird said...

Happy anniversary, Mr. and Mrs. Quickie! I'm very proud to say that I still have my souvenir stadium cup!