My niece graduated last weekend. We went up to Mass for it. The weird thing...

[NNadir]

...is that well, she's 21 years old and...

...that's how old my wife was when I moved in with her. I married my wife when she turned 22.

My niece, she's a nice kid, a little unsure of her direction, but well, that's just it, she's a kid. I just for some reason don"t think of her as an independent woman with a profound sense of herself in a fully adult world.

I hope I'm not being unkind in thinking that.

I was older than my wife when we married, but I always contend that she was the real grown up, but none the less I had to put up with a few "robbing the cradle" hostile jokes, which I politely shrugged off. To be clear I wasn't by any stretch the only older guy interested in her, and there were lots of men her age also after her.

I've been living with my wife for 42 years, married almost 41, and I love her more than I could ever have imagined I could love anyone. Our lives together have been magical, and my memory of our first years together fill me with a kind of awe as to how it happened at all.

Still, I wonder. My niece strikes me as an advanced adolescent.

People are different I guess. I hope. Everyone who met my wife when we were "just" lovers thought I should marry her and I took their advice, but still...

If she were older when she married she might have done better than me I think.

It's bothering me a bit.

[pfitz59]

1. My wife was 23 when we married.

I was 27. My folks were both 23 when they married. As was my daughter. My sons are 36 with no marriage in sight.