My husband Steve proposed to me at Falcon Field, a little airport where he loved to fly when off-duty from Williams Air Force Base. He was finishing pilot training in Phoenix, and I had started grad school in Southern California. We wanted to be together.

 Our wedding celebration was a hurried event. I bought a long white dress off a sale rack at the mall for $99. Steve agreed to wear his white Air Force formal uniform. From my Indiana home, my mom helped by lining up our church, a caterer, and flowers. We flew back to Indiana the week of our May wedding. It was a joyful celebration—but a blur.

This year our kids encouraged us to have an anniversary party. “Only seven percent of marriages last fifty years!” my son announced. Perhaps I wanted a thoughtful redo of our hasty wedding. Another chance to honor our lives together?  Steve and I agreed That this time we would be in the moment, enjoy the experience, and avoid the blur! In our excitement, we mailed out invitations to nearby friends and relatives.

Then we had a bit of a meltdown, wondering why we were doing this.  It felt selfish. It seemed all about us. But invitees assured us they wanted to celebrate with us–and we had an idea. What if we turned the event into a Gratitude Party?  Could we honor our guests, the people who we love? The people who have enriched our lives?  This idea fired us up!

On Etsy I found a huge metal Gratitude sign and ordered it. We even paid $50 extra to have it shipped early so we could be sure it arrived in time for our gathering.

We decided to open the event with gratitude speeches and a toast to our tribe of relatives and close friends. But when we tried to create these speeches, we discovered you can’t mention every individual in a short speech. Wired like a teacher, I began creating a PowerPoint with a photo of every guest that would play on loop during dinner. I got caught up in it!

While I had to pound on a couple of doors or copy and paste photos from Facebook, we included a picture of all 72 attendees. The best part was, going through every slide and including a snippet of story for each person. For example, our neighbor, John Willis saved our house last year from a broken pipe flood! My close friend Billie Cox always edits my blogs–and often rips up the checks I send to pay her. (Who knew!) My cancer surgeon Linda Liu performed my double mastectomy in 2012. She not only saved my life, Linda became a friend and helped me start a writing program to support cancer patients. These small moments mattered.

A week before the event, I received a UPS notice that the Gratitude sign had been damaged and returned to the sender. Steve looked everywhere online but we could not find a replacement, but somehow it didn’t matter. By now there seemed to be just enough magic sprinkled throughout our preparations that we felt everything would work out.

Indeed, the next morning the damaged metal sign showed up at our front door, bent in half and twisted. We laughed at our good fortune. Steve headed to the garage and within twenty minutes he had repaired it. By evening we had it hung.

Looking back, our anniversary event was all we could have dreamed of–speeches, toasts, dancing and cake, and it was certainly not a blur. We enjoyed it. But in the end, it wasn’t the big celebration that would stand out for me or for Steve. It was the special little moments that allowed us to see the unrecognized beauty in our everyday lives.

I will remember the joy of pasting together a PowerPoint with the stories of people who have enriched our lives. I will remember the magic of the gratitude sign showing up when least expected and how we couldn’t stop laughing about it.  And perhaps most of all I will remember an impromptu moment during dinner when my nine-year-old grandson asked if he could sing us a love song.

When handed the mic, Steven looked into the crowd and froze. I thought he might run away. Instead, he took the mic, looked across the room at us and sang loudly.

I love my parents so much

They are the best ones ever

Then my grandma, pap, my cousins, all my family

They are the best!

I love them so much.

I keep thinking of those fleeting moments. The neighbor who saves you from the flood. The editor who rips up a check you sent her. The little boy who wants to sing in front of everyone that he loves his family.  I came away realizing it is those small moments that I need to be careful to celebrate more fully.

May you find the wonderful, albeit small moments, that need to be celebrated in your life. Now and always.