The class had a rule: women had to ask the men to dance. I am nearly 6 feet tall, and Mark is 6'3" and the only man in the class that I wouldn't tower over. So I asked him every week. While we danced, he talked. About wanting to travel and about starting his own business someday. I was already running mine. I listened. I offered what I could. A minute at a time, something started.

After years of corporate jobs with the traditional two or three weeks off, we both knew that hollow feeling when vacation ended and the next one felt a year away. So when we got together, we made a pact: after every trip, we book the next one. Could be a weekend. Could be a month abroad. Didn't matter. We've kept that promise for 35 years without a single exception. It's not one memory. It's the structure of a life we built on purpose.

We'd give it to Guide Dogs for the Blind, and we have skin in this game. For years, we were breeder custodians with the organization in California, meaning guide dog breeders actually lived in our home. Several of those dogs' "children" went on to change someone's life. We still give annually. This would let us give something bigger, all at once, in honor of every dog we've loved along the way.