50 for 50: 2017

YEAR: 2017

AGE: Turned 47 on Nov. 6

LOCATION: SLC, Ramona Avenue

JAZZ'S RECORD: 51-31

SONGS I LIKED: "Feel It Still" by Portugal the Man; "Thunder" by Imagine Dragons

TV SHOWS I WATCHED: "The Man in the High Castle"; "The Handmaid's Tale"

MOVIES I SAW: "Star Wars: The Last Jedi"; "Guardians of the Galaxy: Volume 2"

For 1997, I didn't write about our wedding day. Such a post could have approached 10,000 words, and I've already written some of this series way too long. Maybe I will recap the day Lori and I married eventually, but it wasn't a priority for this slog of posts.

In 2017, 20 years passed since our wedding. On Aug. 2, I was hoping to recapture a bit of the magic.

My grand idea was to take Lori to the hotel where our reception was, go to the hall where we all gathered, queue up "Mad About You" by Anita Baker, and dance our first song again. 

I called up the hotel and talked to an assistant manager to try arranging it, but alas, the room was being used ... and had been remodeled, so it didn't even look like the place of our reception two decades earlier.

The woman from the hotel was super nice and invited us to the hotel anyway. So on Aug. 2, 2017, we left the boys with my dad and stepmom (we were on vacation) and drove to Madison -- and our first stop was the Concourse Hotel.

The assistant manager met us and let us see some of the places we remembered from 1997 -- the grand staircase and the top-floor lounge -- and let us peek in the hall to see it was completely different. On the top floor, she took a picture of us with the capitol in the background, and Lori got a little emotional. Twenty years is a long time, but our wedding day felt, to sound cliche, really just like yesterday. 

After looking around, the assistant manager invited us to stay for lunch. We were treated to free champagne and a free dessert. The gesture was so classy and was the perfect anniversary meal -- which I remember better than the actual dinner I ate on my wedding night (that part of the reception is a bit of a blur ...).

Lori and I left the hotel with little buzz and walked down State Street toward the Lake Mendota and the university. We walked this walk so many times when we lived in Madison, and some of it was different ... and some was still the same. 

After admiring the view from the UW Terrace, we headed back downtown. We visited Lori's old workplace and chatted with some of her former coworkers. A small midweek farmer's market was in progress near the capitol, and we bought some fresh cheese curds. My champagne buzz wore off, and we returned to the car and drove around Madison for a while.

Among our stops was Our Lady Queen of Peace, the church where our ceremony was held. Then, we drove around our old neighborhood to see how it changed in 17 years. A former coworker of Lori's who wasn't able to talk to her at the office called, and while she conversed, I cruised through residential areas I would take long walks through.

We drove to the north side of Lake Mendota and found a park to relax at for a little while. We ate our cheese curds, and I contemplated actually wading into the lake beyond my knees -- in five years in Madison, I never swam in any of the city's lakes.

For dinner, we stopped at Michael's frozen custard near our old apartment and ordered burgers and sundaes. Then, we headed back to Chicago.

I wrote about all this before, but three years later, I have a new appreciation for that day. Our 20th anniversary wasn't that formal, but it was oddly precise -- it was exactly how we needed to celebrate the occasion. We looked back on that day and our life in Madison. And when we weren't reminiscing, we talked about the boys -- the eventual destination on a journey that really began Aug. 2, 1997.

Our 25th anniversary is two years away -- a milestone that seemed unreal a quarter-century ago. Who knows where we'll be that day, but wherever we are, it will undoubtedly be special. Maybe I can even get Lori to jump in a lake with me.