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This weekend, my husband and I visited the campus where he graduated from medical school more-than-a-few years ago. We held hands under the same trees we had posed beneath with our young family. And we smiled and laughed and told stories about the olden days.

The occasion which drew us was the White Coat Ceremony for my nephew, Jordan. It was an august affair, welcoming the new students into their future profession as Osteopathic physicians. When the Dean smoothed Jordan’s white coat over his broad shoulders, we really could feel a mantle being passed. I looked down our row at Jordan’s wife, Courtney, and their sweet baby, and I remembered.

I remembered that the medical school years were so Dickensonian for us. The best of times and the worst of times all wrapped up together. Sometimes in the same day. I remembered how we struggled, and suffered, and celebrated, and survived. And I remembered that the day we stood under those oak trees with Wendell in his cap, gown, and hood felt like The Greatest Day of All.

It wasn’t, of course. It was just one of many. But I felt the thrill of that one all over again last weekend.  I believe it is the doing and growing and making your way together that builds a couple. (I learned that from John Wayne in McClintock.) But sometimes a moment captures all those things and holds them together — past, present, and future.

And, those moments all taken together build up to a lifetime of The Greatest Days Ever.

Here’s to many more to come. For all of us.