Bex posted Habit and Balance on her Bumbles and Light blog. That led me to Amanda's February Prompt-a-Day post.

The challenge is to take the prompt for the day and write something based on it. Anything.

The prompt for February 1 is "first things first", which seemed a marvelous place to start. And so I shall endeavor to write something each day. Some of them will end up here.

Forty one years and a half years ago I married one most important first things, and Corky became Corky Tryon. Wow.

She still puts up with me, even when I prop up my old Argus C3 Brick on a tripod in front of her, take my light meter readings, set the focus, aperture and shutter speed, and finally click the shutter. Several days later, a photograph emerges to be posted on deviantArt. She puts up with me.

This evening we are sitting in the living room like a couple old married people, she watching a DVD and me hammering away on my Chromebook (which I bought, by the way, so I would not have to retreat into the study when I wanted to write or work on dA stuff). She even has my coffee cup.

"How have you ever managed to stay married so long?" our friends ask. There's a lot of stubbornness involved, not the stubbornness that says my way or the highway, but the stubbornness that says, "We are going to make this work." Keeping a marriage, or any relationship, intact takes work. "For better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part" says the old marriage vow. I can tell you that in forty one years we've seen a lot of that. But here we are and, by God's grace, here we shall be.