My husband Tim and I just celebrated our 26th wedding anniversary. We exchanged cards, Tim gave me flowers and took me out to supper. Over the years we've both changed and grown. Long ago anniversaries and birthdays came and went without a word from him. I finally put my foot down and apparently, he's never forgotten it. He's a wonderful and dear man, I love him more than he'll ever know.

I came across this poem in my "Amish Home Cooking With Elsa" cookbook. No title or author but appropriate for the day.

 
Have you ever thought how much your wife

So fair and young today,

Will do the common workday tasks

'Til her silver wedding day?

Twenty-five years, let's figure it out....

Wash thirteen hundred times

And laundry isn't a beauty shop,

Nor tuneful a washtub's rhyme.

Nine Thousand one hundred and twenty-five

Mornings she'll make the beds -

Sweep the floor and tidy the room

And see that the family is fed.

Three times a day - that's twenty-seven

Thousand three hundred and seventy-five meals

And for years and years from 5 to 9

Children tagging around her heels.

And then the ironing every week -

That's thirteen hundred again.

And the buttons that have to be sewn on

And rips and tears to mend.

Housecleaning time each spring and fall,

And the canning - why no one knows

What a woman does in twenty-five years

Just for her board and clothes.