BUCKING THE SYSTEM: REMEMBERING WHEN LOVE WAS NEW

My husband and I have been reminiscing lately about when our love was new.

Actually, it started out as a joke. One evening after I'd had a particularly long day, Patrick asked me to iron some clothes for him so he could go "hang out with the fellas" for awhile.

My plan for the evening did not include ironing, and I let that be known. Patrick looked at me and, without cracking a smile, said, "When love was new you'd go out your way to iron my clothes. Five years into it, now you want to be uppity."

I couldn't help but laugh, and I did iron his clothes that evening. After all, I didn't want to be considered uppity.

A few evenings later, we had another discussion about how things used to be before the kids and mortgages and insurance premiums became a way of life. We remembered when we could make a last-minute decision to take a weekend getaway without knowing where we were going. We smiled as we spoke of the "I love you because ..." game played over so many dinners at upscale eateries in town.

Little did we know dining out would become a thing of the past after PJ -- our rowdy, rambunctious, ready-to-ravage-whatever-is-in-sight younger son -- came along. Now we're just happy to make it through a drive-through in relative peace.

Patrick and I also dusted off our wedding album and looked at how young (and how many pounds lighter) we were. After explaining to the kids why they weren't in any of the pictures, we set the book aside in favor of getting Jerry and PJ bathed and bedded.

Afterwards, the wedding album came out again. All of the sudden, Patrick started describing his feelings when I appeared at the end of the aisle and he saw me in my wedding dress for the first time. And I remembered how I felt when he slipped my engagement ring off my right hand and into its place alongside the wedding band he'd just placed on my left ring finger.

And although we'd talked about these exact feelings many times over the past four-and-a-half years, we talked about them again. We discussed the frustrations we face every time a baby sitter cancels or a bill takes precedence over a night out.

But then we went in to check on the kids a final time before going to bed ourselves. After removing PJ's head from Jerry's back and covering them both, we turned off the Cartoon Network and the light in their room.

Patrick went to make a final check of the bucket in place since he decided to fix the air conditioner himself, and I made a final sweep of the living room floor to get the various cookie and cracker crumbs scattered everywhere by my little crumb-snatchers.

And then my husband and I went out and sat on the porch of our little house, right outside the bedroom window of the two boys we wouldn't trade for anything in the world.

And together we decided that love was still new.

Tamara Zellars Buck is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.