Today, as I sit at my bungalow in Richmond Hill, Ontario, sipping tea with Julie, the flurries swirling around us, I’m struck by the weight—and the wonder—of this moment. Fifty years ago, on a crisp March day in 1975, we stood hand-in-hand at the altar, two wide-eyed dreamers, pledging lifetime of love at St. Teresa's Church Hong Kong. Back then, we couldn’t have imagined the symphony of chaos, joy, and quiet miracles that lay ahead. Time, as they say, flies when you’re busy living.
Our wedding was simple—a modest dinner gathering of families and friends and a shared belief that love could weather any storm. Julie, radiant in her lace-trimmed dress, had a smile that outshone the summer sun. I was a nervous young man in a black suit, certain of only one thing: I’d follow her anywhere. And follow her I did—through decades of laughter, squabbles over burnt casseroles, midnight feedings with our babies, and the slow, steady rhythm of building a life together.
35 years in Ontario Canada our roots here run deep. Our neighborhood isn’t just a backdrop; it’s a character in our story. The kids and grandkids live minutes away, their laughter spilling into our kitchen every Sunday for raucous family dinners. We’ve watched this town grow from sleepy suburb to vibrant community, just as we’ve watched our grandchildren transform from squirming infants to confident big fellows. It’s a privilege to age in a place where every street corner holds a memory—the park where our kids learned to ride a bike, the ice cream shop where Julie and I still sneak away for “date night” cones.
25th Anniversary in 2000
But life with Julie has never been just about nesting. Early on, we discovered a shared restlessness, a hunger to explore. Weekdays might find us at the community center, paddles in hand, locked in a fiercely unskilled but enthusiastic table tennis match with our fellow seniors. (Let it be said: Julie’s backhand is brutal for a woman of her age.) Those games became more than exercise—they were a lifeline to friendship and laughter, a reminder that joy thrives in the simplest of moments.
And then there were the adventures beyond our doorstep. Over the years, we’ve crisscrossed Canada like a pair of modern-day explorers, armed with maps, and an unshakable belief that roadside diners serve the best pie. We’ve stood breathless on the windswept cliffs of Marintime Provinces. Seafood lobsters, mussels, even burgers of seafood were plenty and inviting. Marvelously beautiful is the beauty of British Columbia’s old-growth forests, and gotten gloriously lost in Quebec City’s cobblestone maze.
San Francisco 2019
With old friends — couples who’ve known us since our days as clueless newlyweds—we’ve road-tripped to Chicago for deep-dish pizza pilgrimages, wandered Boston’s Freedom Trail.
Yet nothing quite compares to the magic of our cruises. There’s a particular thrill in waking up to a new Caribbean island each morning—strolling Barbados’ sugar-sand beaches, dancing to steel drums in Jamaica, or sipping rum punch in St. Lucia as the sun melts into the sea. We’ve floated past glaciers in Alaska, marveled at the Acropolis under a Mediterranean moon, and gotten delightfully lost in Tokyo’s neon-lit alleys. Each journey taught us something: how to say “thank you” in fifteen languages, that Julie gets seasick in rough waters, and that the world is both vast and intimately small—a tapestry of stories waiting to be lived.
And then there’s China—a place that stitches together past and present for us. Visiting now feels like stepping into a kaleidoscope. Cities that once whispered with bicycles and street vendors now pulse with skyscrapers that pierce the clouds. In Shanghai the futuristic skyline of Pudong rises where rice paddies once stretched. Yet in quiet moments, we still find echoes of the China we knew: the scent of jasmine tea in a hidden courtyard, the clatter of mahjong tiles in a Beijing hutong, the timeless grace of the Li River’s karst mountains. It’s a bittersweet joy, this dance between memory and progress, but it reminds us that beauty endures—even as the world transforms.
As I look at Julie today—her silverly light brown hair catching the light, her hands still reaching instinctively for mine—I see the girl I married and the woman she’s become. We’ve weathered storms, literal and metaphorical. We’ve bickered over GPS directions in foreign countries, wept at the loss of parents and loved ones, and laughed until our sides ached at the absurdity of aging (who knew knees could protest so loudly after gardening?). Through it all, we’ve held fast to two truths: that love is a verb, not a feeling, and that life’s richest moments often come unannounced—a shared sunset over the Caribbean, a grandchild’s unprompted “I love you,” the quiet pride of watching a once-barren neighborhood in China bloom with hope.
So here’s to 50 years—not of perfection, but of showing up. Of choosing each other, day after day, across continents and decades. To Julie, my partner in ping-pong, my co-captain on life’s wild voyage: the adventure isn’t over yet. Let’s see what the next chapter holds.
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