A Little Tradition We Have...

I'll let you in on a secret: Owen is actually a romantic guy. I don't know why other people don't seem to see it, but I didn't just fall in love with the first big ego I met at Harvard...I must have met hundreds of bigger egos before he ever handed me my key at move-in, Sophomore year.
There was this day when I had first moved down to New Jersey in the summer of 2003. I was depressed. I had left Cape Cod during that really golden time when the tourists have left and the beaches belong to the locals for just a few stunning weeks, and here I was in New Jersey. In Plainfield, no less, with no coast line and long, low train whistles at night. I felt out of place.
So Owen and I went for a drive. I thought we weren't headed any particular place. Out to the Parkway, ok, down a few exits, whatever...but then the landscape started changing. There were Mini-golf places, soft serve stands and beach-themed street names. We finally stopped at Seaside Heights.
Seaside Heights is the Jersey Shore to me. It certainly isn't Cape Cod, but it is what you might expect to find at the water's edge in the most densely populated area of the country: tall flashing arcades and a busy boardwalk, full of every kind of way-off-the-diet foods and barkers at carnival games yelling: "Come on, buddy, win something for your girl!" All at the edge of the ocean, which goes on and on, with no jetty's or islands, just the Atlantic...next stop, England.
Owen brought me to the shore because he knew I missed Cape Cod. What he captured was that energy of the Barnstable County Fair from when I was a kid: the magic of flashing circus lights and rides, the thrill of rigged games and the smell of fried dough. And there was the ocean, the same ocean I grew up on.
We took a strip of pictures at one of those old-fashioned photo booths in an arcade. It was the start of something pretty cool.
We've gone back together every summer to walk along the boardwalk, loose some money trying to win souveniers, and take another strip of pictures.
This year was Jef's first, but our sixth!
I can't stop looking at these sometimes. Pictures do hold a thousand words.
The first strip is that day in 2003. The third strip is the year we got married. In last year's strip I'm pregnant but we haven't told anyone yet. And then, look at this year's strip:

OK, ok...my son doesn't know yet to look at the camera. Actually, he looks like he's saying: what the heck are we crammed into this little booth for? But what I keep noticing is just how happy my husband looks. I mean, I have rarely ever seen him smile so completely, so genuinely, especially knowing he was on film!

I hope we keep this up for all of our lives. I told Owen when we got back to the house on Saturday that I can totally imagine the two of us, old and grey, walking down the busy boardwalk, shelling out like $50 by then just to get a strip of four pictures, and adding another strip to our collage of years, of summers, of memories.

Very cool. Life is good.