The United State Supreme Court ruled today for same sex marriage to be legal nationwide, and as I read the various articles telling this wonderful truth, I told my son to come into the living room. The sun was shining through our window and his gray eyes glistened and grew bigger as I sat him down and told him that I had something very important to tell him. As he stared at me, wondering what was going on, I told him that, as an almost-6-year old, he would remember today. Today is the day that history was made in the United States. I explained to him that now, men could marry men and women could marry women. His response was telling and simple: "That's great, Mama. People who love one another can now spend their lives together." He summed it up perfectly and went back to play. It IS great. People can spend their lives together. It's that simple truth, echoed in his response to me. Love really did win today. It won for us all.

I was allowed to marry because I'm a woman and I married a man. My husband and I celebrated our 13 year wedding anniversary this week, and with every year that passed, I often thought about the many people who wanted to marry but could not. When we were out to dinner, my husband reached for my hand -- my hand with my wedding rings and his hand with his tattooed band crossed across the table and we sat and connected, celebrating our marriage. This sanctity of marriage, this connection despite the difficulties, is what has sustained me and our lives together. We reminisced about our past, talked about the kids, and dreamed about our future. But this hand holding really sat with me all week -- this connection and our commitment to one another, symbolized by our wedding bands crossing together.

When he reached for my hand that night, I flashed back over the past 20 years in that one gesture. As we drove back home with the top down, the wind blowing in my hair and the setting sun's rays hitting my back, I remembered our past -- the 13 years married and the seven years before that. I remembered how I left my high school prom with a wild, blonde-haired boy driving his cousin's Mustang convertible and how that started a 20 year love affair. How we named our daughter on a dark country road, driving with the windows down, 18 years before she was even born. How he traveled the world and so did I, but how we ended up back together, somehow. How I walked down a long pier to a submarine hatch to deliver him dinner pre-9/11. How we finally were married (after what seemed like an eternity but wasn't) and how amazing it felt to be connected to someone in that way.

All of that has turned into a legacy that we have created, together. We traveled together, married. We moved together, married. We built a life together, married. We have had two beautiful children together, married. My marriage is a gift and sometimes, it is work, hard work. But all the best things are. Marriage isn't always perfect and it certainly isn't a decision everyone should make or that everyone even wants to make. It's a choice, and one that I'm so happy everyone is now free to make. Love wins today for all.