A Couple's TrophyWhen would the rain come? Would it be a brief and all-but-forgotten downburst? A daylong deluge? My first memory of falling in love with Wimbledon is of being curled up in front of the TV with Joyce at a Delaware beach house, trading weather forecasts as we watched the unrolling of the giant mats to keep the grass dry at the queen of all tennis championships. Years begin to blur. But I remember our early love affair with Wimbledon included the mesmerizing serve of a 6 foot, 4 inch Croatian named Goran Ivanisevic. And the equally mesmerizing choral masterpiece "Flower Duet," repeated so often that only years later did I realize that what I'd come to think of as Wimbledon's theme song was actually a British Airways ad. As the Wimbledon seasons passed, tennis came to play an increasingly joyful role in our life together. Joyce and I got together in 1985. Beginning in our early, largely closeted years — back before our shared treasures included a Canadian marriage license, a Vermont civil union certificate or even a domestic partnership document from our little hometown of Takoma Park, Maryland — tennis helped us engage with the world as a twosome. And tennis helped us learn how to continually re-imagine - -and expand — our vision of our future together. We started small, not really thinking beyond playing now and then on the cracked local public courts. Before long, we started sprinkling in semi-private lessons and "round robins" on vacations. That introduced us to tennis pros, whose friendly advice about serves or spin or footwork always seemed to come up later to help us cope with tricky challenges — even the off-court ones that life threw at us. Eventually, we hit the jackpot, both as players and fans. We joined a gay doubles league. And we started traveling to some of the world's best tournaments.
Wimbledon, though, we saved. One day we would go, we vowed every summer, deciding we would only allow ourselves such an extravagance once the All England Club installed a retractable roof on center court. I had morphed into a Scotch Presbyterian by marriage: No way would we break the family piggybank and risk winding up with only a soggy memory of listening to raindrops from under those purple and green umbrellas during an all-day rain delay. In our decades together, we've survived hurricane-force winds on Hawaii and a couple of monsoons of our own making. We've had enough of stormy weather. So, when the TV commentators' chatter about a retractable roof included a firm date, Joyce and I decided to mark our 25th year together by giving ourselves a pair of Wimbledon tickets. As 2010 approached, we investigated how to reward our relationship with that sterling silver trophy. Normally, we mark our anniversary by going to dinner at our favorite French restaurant. But reaching the quarter-century mark deserves something a bit more special, we think. Mere mortals can get Wimbledon tickets one of three ways: winning a lottery, camping out all night to be first in line for the limited remaining seats or buying them on the Internet through an authorized dealer. The prices are heart-stopping. We gulped, then settled on tickets for the Round of 16 day of matches — which produces the quarterfinalists — on, of course, center court, home of that all-important retractable roof. The tickets have yet to arrive, but we're deep into preparing to enjoy our first — and possibly only — day at Wimbledon. Twenty-five years of engineering a trophy-winning relationship involves a lot of figuring your way past life's rainy moments. Deb Price of The Detroit News writes the first nationally syndicated column on gay issues. To find out more about Deb Price and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com. COPYRIGHT 2010 CREATORS.COM 
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