It was 10 years ago today...

When I think about it, the fact my wife and I got together at all is kinda remarkable. I was a long-haired college student in Oxford, Mississippi, Avril was a novice lawyer in Auckland, New Zealand. We met through the pages of a comic book, of all places (Dave Sim's Cerebus) where we became pen pals. We met in person for the first time when I was living in an impossibly dank and dinky trailer in Mississippi. She won a green card lottery and showed up on my doorstep in California about five years later, and we thought we'd see how things went.

Ten years ago today, we got married. I proposed spontaneously, while we were watching "King of the Hill" on a snowy Sunday night. And while with any marriage there have been ups and downs I can honestly say my life wouldn't have been anything near as fun as it's been with Avril by my side this last decade. We've seen Alaska and Australia, Mississippi and Mexico; we've had a terrific little boy who constantly surprises and amazes me; for the last three years I've become the one in the relationship with the strange foreign accent as we moved back to her homeland.

What was that really bad movie, "The Butterfly Effect," which shows how everything can change with a tiny incident? Sometimes when I look at my boy I think, what if I hadn't been reading Cerebus, what if we stopped exchanging letters, what if she hadn't won the green card -- who knows who I'd be now?

I'm honestly having trouble parsing the fact that it's been a bloody decade already -- somehow, the 2000s have just whizzed by like a ninja in the night. Marriage will show you the best of yourself, and sometimes, the worst of yourself. I hope it's been more of the best than the worst; and I'm still kind of stunned and happy when I think how it's all ended up since that day 16 or 17 years ago when I first got a letter from a girl in New Zealand.