I Don't Want to Miss a Thing

My husband and I didn't have a "traditional" wedding by most people's standards. We had started planning one: the church, the huge reception, etc. One night, he turned to me and said, "Why are we planning this. Let's just have a small wedding and get married sooner."

I cried. Then, I got over it because I realized that he was right. We were planning this huge wedding that wasn't really "us" and we were looking at a guest list that included people that we didn't even know (those friends of the family and former business partners that we would have had to invite out of that ever noble "tradition"). And at $28 a plate, it was getting a little crazy. Besides, we were trying to save money to buy a house. A huge wedding wasn't going to help that cause.

And the biggest reason? At the time, my maternal grandmother was ill, and we wanted to be sure that she could attend the wedding.

So, we got married a year earlier. An outdoor wedding to which only parents, grandparents, and siblings were invited. We had an acoustic guitarist perform the music and a sit-down meal inside a Victorian farmhouse (an oxymoron if I've ever heard one). My grandmother passed away just days before the wedding, unfortunately, but her spirit was strongly present. I credit her with keeping the baby skunks out of the backyard (they had been there all week) and with getting my fading flowers to bloom that morning.

To continue our unconventional wedding, our wedding song was "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing" by Aerosmith. We had bounced around several songs, ones that were more sedate and romantic, but this one just seemed the best choice for us and our feelings for each other.

Fast forward to today. This song has a double meaning for us now because it encompasses our feelings about our son.

Never have I felt it more strongly than the last couple of days. Being terribly sick with a horrid stomach bug, I spent yesterday sleeping on the bathroom floor. In those periods when I was awake, I could hear my husband and son playing downstairs. They were laughing and giggling and talking....and I cried.

I don't want to miss a thing.

"I just wanna stay with you in this moment forever..."