Best Weekend Ever

Life is short, as we all know.  It's filled with successes and failures, highs and lows, the expected and the unexpected.  When the positives occur at the same time or one right after another, we often say that the planets aligned properly.  When the negatives happen together or successively, we look for a full moon.  Both phrases, I'm sure, are rooted in paganism to some degree.  Whatever the reason, this past weekend is by far the best weekend of my life, for the simplest to the grandest of reasons.

Simple things make me happy.  So do the more complex, but more for their complexity, typically, than the end result.  In a way, that speaks volumes about me, but it's true.  I don't care for the elaborate, the ostentatious, the grandiose.  I remember a scene from the third Indiana Jones movie where the real holy grail had to be chosen from among various vessels, and Jones has to choose the one chalice correctly:

But I digress.

My fantastic weekend ended with finding a brown sweater.  I've been looking for a brown sweater -- that isn't a cardigan -- for nearly two years.  Like Little Red Riding, every brown sweater upon which I came was either too small, the wrong kind or unavailable in my size.  No longer.  I found my brown sweater and even had a $20 coupon to use on it, making the purchase even more palatable.  About the only downside to the purchase is that I can't use it yet, despite this being December 14, because it's over sixty degrees outside.  Nevertheless, my quest for the brown sweater has ended.

The bookend to the best weekend ever happened last Friday.  Against high odds, the Chicago Cubs outbid their rival St. Louis Cardinals and several other teams for the services of Jason Heyward.  The signing is excellent on several different levels.  First, the Cubs get an excellent player at the beginning of the prime of his career.  Second, they didn't overspend to get him.  Third, they took him away from a hated division rival and in so doing, weakened it.  Fourth, it gives the Cubs a good player who does things they need done well. 

For those of you who haven't been or aren't Cubs fans or don't understand baseball, all I can say is:  1908 and 1945.  We haven't won a World Series title (championship) since 1908 and not even been in the World Series since 1945.  Since 1984, we've been mildly competitive a time or two, but nothing that's set the sports world on fire.  In part, this is due to the feckless ownership we had.  Another reason is that we've had incredibly bad luck.  Either way, the Heyward signing, combined with the team's unexpectedly premature performance this past season, has us inching our way closer and closer to the promised land.  I just wish my Mom and Grandma were still around to see it.

Neither of those results, however, compare with what happened in between.  For I married my one true love, the light of my life Karen, on Saturday.  The event didn't go off without a hitch, of course, but we just laughed off the glitches.  The ceremony was quaint and meaningful to us, surrounded most of the people who mattered to us.  The reception afterwards was a throwback to an easier time, almost European in its structure.  No fanfare, no fancy food, no ceremony.  Just food, family and friends in a convivial atmosphere.

Karen and I have known each other for around six years.  I fell in love with her the moment I heard her voice and talked with her.  I knew that I'd found the right person for me, albeit in trying circumstances.  We've weathered many a storm together, some medical, some financial, some personal.  Yet there's no better person with whom I'd rather go through life.  Smart, beautiful, fun, playful, generous, kind, supportive -- there's no use listing all her wonderful attributes because I could fill the page with them and still need more pages. 

She is the best thing to happen to me. I am undeserving of her, but God has seen fit to give me to her.  Accordingly, it is my responsibility to take care of her as best I am able.  I will love her and nurture her and comfort her and lift her up.  I will be there for her, however she needs me, whenever she needs me.  Since I've known her, my life has unalterably been improved in ways seen and unseen.  I am truly the most fortunate of men.

So now I have someone with whom I can wear my much sought after brown sweater and with whom I can cheer my Cubs on to the improbable victory that has so far best the law of averages.  I will go to my final resting place confident in the knowledge that I will spend all eternity with the best person whom I've ever known.

And I will love my Karen Sue beyond the end of time.

(c) 2015 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles