HAPPY 24TH ANTIVERSARY FETTIT

Today is a significant day.

Twenty-four years ago today Fettit and I met and began our life together. I was a staff sergeant in the Air Force stationed at K I Sawyer Air Force Base, and newly separated from my wife, and Fettit was just finishing up his junior year at Northern Michigan University in Marquette, MI, a small college town situated on the shores of the big lake they call Gitche Gumee - Lake Superior.

We were children then - although I had children - I was not quite 23 years old and Fettit was just shy of his 21st birthday.

Our relationship has seen many incarnations in those years - from lover to friend to brother and partner. Partner, not in the typical sense, but I guess we have created an entirely new stratum.

We are lovers who lived as a couple for almost five years and then went on with our lives - others came and went but never stuck - but we continually stayed in contact, even through all of his breakups and my relocations, to reunite as friends and brothers off and on throughout the years. Today we have lived as non-sexual partners for over four years.

We live a life dedicated to each other without the customary obligations of coupling (never again). We love and are committed to each other and live our lives in a distinctively original style that society does not have a classification.

Today signifies a celebration of longevity without the societally mandated constraints and entanglements of being a committed couple.

That is why calling today our anniversary is inaccurate, and tonight while at dinner the Wiley-Conforti's coined a new term - Antiversary.

But we are a family, and my now grown children jokingly refer to Fettit as their Step Mommy on occasion(that is an entirely separate entry), and he is most assuredly one of Noelle's favorite people - she loves her Papa.

Fettit has been a member of my family since day one, included in all family celebrations and activities - well there was the unfortunate incident when my mother called him the little princess - but that was years ago - and he is embraced and acknowledged as an embedded part of our immediate tribe.

We will receive no cards or gifts for our milestone, but in my heart, and hopefully in Fettit's, there is an understanding of love and acceptance, and gratitude for the deication and perseverance, and most assuredly patience, in getting us to this point.

I have been blessed to have found someone who constantly makes me laugh, and by constant I mean endless and continuous, persistently keeps me on my toes, and who unequivocally loves my granddaughter and children, as only he can do.

Oh, and have I mentioned, he cooks like no bodies business!

Happy Antiversary Fettit - Breth-A-Whip!