Fifteen. It's the number after fourteen and before sixteen. In English, it's the smallest natural number with seven letters in it's spelled name (thank you wikipedia). In Irish, fifteen is a cúig déag. Fifteen is a triangular number, a hexagonal number, and a pentatope number. There was apparently a TV show called Fifteen. It's a song by Taylor Swift. Fifteen is the atomic number of phosphorus. There are fifteen total individuals in the mollusk species (bet you didn't know that). It's the age of quinceañera, a important birthday for latin american girls. People get fifteen minutes of fame. Fifteen may be all those things, but to me it's so much more.
You see, many years ago on April 19th at the age of 15 I started to date this boy named Kevin. Little did I know the adventure that would start that day. Fast forward a few (ok, more than a few) years and I married that boy. If you take all the digits from the short date of our anniversary and add them up, what do you get? 1+1+2+6+0+5 = 15. So yeah, I make that one work, but give me some credit for actually realizing that in the greater scheme of things. Move ahead another two years and even though she was due on 12/22, our darling daughter was born on 12/15. Another few years later, our sweet boy decided he didn't want to arrive on his Dad's birthday, but wait another 8 days to be born on 3/15. So three of the most important people in my life are all tied to the number fifteen. In fourteen days (should have posted this yesterday, but the dear husband had to do work), it will be fifteen years since that fateful day in April. So in addition to celebrating my father in law and niece's birthdays, we are hoping for some sort of celebration. Hopefully we can come up with something worthy of the number fifteen!
