I forgot my phone in the hotel room and I was panicked.What if one of the kids needed me, what if something was wrong with the dogs? My husband assured me all would be okay.We had gone away for the weekend. Just the two of us.

I have known my husband practically my whole life. His mom and my mom bowled together. I would ride in the back of her station wagon eating my peanut butter sandwich and then she would drop me off at school. I remember cutting out his 2nd grade picture from the yearbook, when I was in first grade. We liked each other through most of our school years. But it wasn’t until he unintentionally (or intentionally) serenaded me  his sophomore (my freshman) year in high school. It was in the chorus room, and he was singing and playing guitar with another student. He was singing This Boy, by the Beatles. I knew that he knew what he was doing.And while we didn’t start officially dating for another year, that truly was the beginning of Us.

We have been together now over 30 years. Married for almost 27.And sometimes, it is easy to forget about the Us. The Us we were, the Us before them.

The Us before four sons in 5 years.

The Us before careers and bills.

The Us before dogs and cats.

The Us before mortgages and rental properties.

The Us before housework and chores.

The Us before chronic illness.

The Us before Autism.

The Us before deaths and depression and stress.

The Us before all of them.

So there we were, alone for the weekend, and me without my phone. And I survived. We stayed out til 2 in the morning, and we laughed like we haven’t laughed in almost 30 years. The kind of laugh that takes your breath away. The type of laugh that makes you almost pass out. The laugh that you think you are done laughing but twenty minutes later you start laughing again.We laughed like that in April of 1987. We had gone to Stevens Point Wisconsin to visit his grandparents. It was late, and we were in one of the bedrooms, each in a twin bed. Mark did something that started us laughing, and we simply could not stop. We were laughing so hard his grandmother came in and told us to be quiet because grandpa was sleeping. And here we were almost 30 years later, laughing that laugh again.

On the drive home, we cranked music and sang along, harmonizing, like we used to. We talked about how we need to get the guitar out and start playing and singing again.Because that was Us. That is Us. We  were something before all of Them.And now, finally it can be Our time again. Just singing and laughing.