Choices

One of the best choices I ever made in my life came naturally. I fell in love with a Welsh girl from my hometown. We went to school together. We went to church together. We lived in the same neighborhood as children.

Ann and I noticed each other at various times during grade school. In first grade, my friend J Verlo Rose and I exited the bus.

"Let's play kissing tag," he whispered. "I'll get the twins, and you get the other one."

The other one was Ann. When I kissed her, she screamed her protest into my mouth--her chocolate brown eyes sparkling with contempt.

Then high school came along. We dated the first time, and I wrote about that in a blog a number of times. Dating began like that. We went on to college. I served a mission in Germany, and we wrote to each other.

That's when we became friends. I returned in early January of 1974, around the eighth or ninth. We began dating, and weeks later, we began talking about engagement and marriage. By February is was a "done deal."

My only regret about that short engagement is the fact that I should have married her sooner, which was not possible. It was a time of my life with memories, that I will always treasure.

We spent this past weekend in Salt Lake City, and while Ann and Jack walked around Temple Square, I took pictures to celebrate our "beginnings" as a family and as a couple. The weather was warm. The skies were blue with etchings of feathery clouds. The air was crisp and clean, typical of any spring I remember.

Walking about the grounds was interesting. The first time I saw the quail, I thought that I must have been been mistaken, that I must have just seen a couple of birds, but when I asked a couple of sister missionaries, they told me about the quail there.

In spring, the eggs hatch and young ones follow the hens about the grounds--each chick only an inch in height.

Some things never change. Looking at things on Temple Square, I found parts that had not changed, but things that were different were incredibly impressive.

By the time I snapped this photograph, it was already approaching late afternoon. Clouds in the sky were omens of spring showers that began on our way homeward, but it would be a gentle spring rain--one that always brought me comfort.

It is a time of rebirth, a time of sweet breezes filled with the scent of spring.

You have to be a farm boy to understand a notion like that. It's not about flowers. It's about soaking ground gently so that wheat can sprout and emerge into the air, eventually becoming waves of green in gentle summer breezes.

And 37 years ago on May 31, there was another beginning. One that Ann and I chose to make hand in hand. It's one that never ends, one that seems to be just beginning, although years have passed and left us older and wiser for the most part.

It's what happens. Life is an incredible journey.