September 7- the luckiest date in my life!  51 years ago, the most amazing man married me in his family church in Buffalo, NY. In doing so, he changed the future for all of us. He became the father of Cindy and Jason and Cindy and I became part of a remarkable family, far flung geographically, but closer than you can imagine in every other way. 

On that date, neither one of us could even dream of what the future would bring. In fact, we weren’t even sure we’d live to celebrate even 50 years together! Never could we have guessed that on our 51st anniversary we would find ourselves in Paris, in a hotel room with a velvet door, silk moire fabric walls, and a recessed ceiling painted with clouds and lit by tiny lights like stars. Yet here we are!

How fitting that yesterday we found our first fence of locks.  The story behind the locks has to do with an Italian novel wherein a couple placed a lock on a bridge, then threw the key into a river to symbolize the eternity of their love. This started a tradition of lovers in Paris doing the same thing to a couple of bridges over the Seine. Ultimately there were so many locks that the weight of them caused structural damage to the bridges. The government removed them, but symbols of love can’t be denied and the locks showed up on fences around the landmarks of Paris. These were at Sacre Couer which seems fitting because it means Sacred Heart. Of course there were a number of vendors selling new locks which sort of takes out the romance of it all.

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The view from our hotel window