wideeyedfunk

Tag: wedding anniversary

  • 21.

    You would think that the 21 year wedding anniversary gift was paper, since the sticky tab shopping list on my desk today stated clearly, in capitals, with black ink, “toilet paper.”

    We both would’ve missed it if Google calendar hadn’t sent an email. I reminded the Spouse and he paled. “Did you plan anything?” he asked, looking sort of like someone who smelled a storm on the wind. “No,” I said. “Should we have?” he asked still looking kind of squirrelly. I shrugged.

    Some years call for the pomp. Some don’t. The Spouse and I, we’re in it together and counting years is fun but they don’t matter. Not always. Not like the day-to-day love.

    You know what matters? In my rush to get home, to see the Spouse at the end of a day or servitude to The Man, I failed utterly to pick up some toilet paper.

     

  • One Score and Two Hours Ago…

    …the Spouse and I married on a Tuesday afternoon and unbeknownst to us, the WideEyedHousehold formed. Coalesced. Here we are four apartments and four houses, five cities, and 16 cars later.

    We got married at 2:30pm and I planned to stop and think about it at 2:30 today – exactly 20 years later. When I looked at the clock it was 4pm and I was folding whites in the basement laundry room. I thought back. At 2:30, the Spouse was vacuuming the downstairs while I vacuumed the upstairs. Evidently marital harmony sounds like whining Orecks.

    Twenty years ago today I had on a purple dress with a little row of flowers along the back, Watteau train level. The Spouse had on a suit, the first of the three he’s owned as an adult. I remember our family sort of awkwardly assembling at the church, then there was some chanting, then we were married. No one bothered to turn on all of the lights in the church. It was after all a Tuesday afternoon, not a busy God day, and marrying folks doesn’t take all that long.

    Today I’m wearing a Chewbacca for President t-shirt and shorts. The Spouse, a red polo shirt and shorts. We rode bikes to the farmer’s market, hit the bank and post office, and stopped at the Lloyd’s Taco food truck in the park on the way home. The sounds of a city Saturday stood in for ceremonial chanting and the sun gleamed through breaks in the clouds. I thought about 20 years’ of marriage the whole time.

    What we have here is one of those linear moments, a point of connection with the past so clear and strong that the intervening years fold. Then and now seem the same. Overlapped. I am lucky that the connection is positive. The anchor secured in that day is tied to an ever-spindling line of love, connecting me and the Spouse through the times, the places. Connecting us so that the promises we made 20 years and two hours ago matter the same now as they did then.

    Later we’ll put on the fancy: the current version of The Suit for the Spouse, a dress with a purple pattern and bright red shoes for me. We’ll have a nice dinner in a place with valet parking. And we’ll smile at each other.

  • Dark energy and love.

    Yesterday evening I was reading about the form of the visible universe in my new backyard astronomy book. The WideEyedSpouse was doing something involving dinner while I sat at the awesome vintage kitchen table. Wiggins the Ancient Cat kept trying to put his butt on the page. Tibbit the Useless rested her chin on my knee. She was bound for disappointment, as I was reading not eating. Hamish the Corgi sat looking at me, learning about the universe through our mental link.

    Stars. Planets. Constellations. Yeah, yeah. Nothing new there. (Except that I discovered that I should be able to see the Milky Way directly above my house right now and all I can see is the glare of my neighbors’ anti-thief lights. Annoying, but what can do you? Cities are creepy.)

    Then, I looked at a photograph from the Hubble that captured hundreds of whirling galaxies. They face every which way. They are different colors. Big ones, little ones. Galaxies all over the place in every direction. There are billions of them. I felt a weird nerve rush.

    I didn’t know there were so many. Did you? Sure ok, the astronomers and physicists know but. I never realized. Did you know a little one is running into ours over on the other side? Holy cats.

    I looked at a depiction of the distribution of galaxies in the known universe. They cluster in strings and clots. They look like rumples of ocean foam on the incoming tide.  I sort of wondered what was in between. The astronomy book said there was nothing in between. That seemed weird but ok with me. I like a tidy universe. I guess it isn’t so simple.

    Evidently there is dark matter.

    Evidently there is dark matter-energy and it is abundant.

    Evidently we, the universe, are expanding because of this hypothesized dark energy and eventually all will be diffuse. All will be isolated and alone, beyond each other’s detection – unable to even know that anything else is out there.

    The WideEyedSpouse and I have been married for 19 years and 40 minutes as the clock looks at this moment. I’m sitting here at the desk worried about deadlines and dark energy. The WideEyedSpouse is 30 feet and 2 stories away worried about getting the racing stripes placed correctly on the Mini Cooper S. Our little bit of the universe isn’t expanding too quickly for us. I don’t think it can.

  • 18 years together | 4,100 miles apart

    “It’s disgustingly hot and humid,” the WideEyedSpouse tells me. I can hear the barest hint of dogs panting in the background of the call. “Huh,” I tuck my cold feet under me and look out the wide window into a chill, gloomy, rainy fall afternoon. “I’m putting the a/c unit back in the window,” he says and I shiver.

    Yesterday was our 18th wedding anniversary and we were almost as far away from each other as we can be while remaining in the U.S. We weren’t the farthest apart we’ve ever been on an anniversary. That was in 1998 when I was living in a Eureka BombShelter tent on the north shore of Attu Island and he was in Madison, Wisconsin.

    The WideEyedSpouse celebrated our anniversary by walking the dogs in the park. As their gift to him, Hamish and Miss Tibbit produced a record setting 11 dookies in one day between the two of them. “Congratulations Boss!” they might have been thinking, “Many happy years to come!”

    ForksI celebrated by huddling at my makeshift desk, crafting careful language into formal documents. In a morning break from the labors, WideEyedFriend D. and I poked at the ever-entertaining frozen pig heads, examined the nori packages, and flirted with new teapots at New Sagaya grocery. WideEyedFriend D. selected a package of the smallest item at the store for closer examination and the bottom fell out. Ten thousand tiny forks scattered at our feet. We stood quietly watching them for a bit. I thought they would go away on their own. They did not.

    My anniversary lunch was miso soup, house salad, and bacon wrapped enoki on a skewer at Yakitori. Crunchy salty fat around fibrous chew. Interesting, and besides, after 18 years I figured I should shake things up a bit.

    5guysFor anniversary dinner, WideEyedSpouse had a Five Guys burger. He sent me a picture. I went to Aladdin’s with Friend D. to feast on perfectly prepared halibut followed by baklava.

    It was a relaxed and happy 18th anniversary. 4100 miles apart.

  • 17th Wedding Anniversary: Furniture

    No traditional gift is defined for the 17th wedding anniversary. Evidently, being married for 17 years is somehow unremarkable. A middle anniversary. One where you aren’t newlywed, nor have you achieved anything truly notable. It is just part way along the long haul. It is Indiana if you are stuck driving from New Jersey to Minnesota. It is Iowa if you are taking the interstates from Buffalo to Phoenix. Not interesting, not there yet (whatever that means for wedding anniversaries), but at least making some progress.

    In modern gifting etiquette, the 17th anniversary gift is furniture. I am disappointed in this because at first I read the chart wrong and thought it was porcelain. I need a new toilet, a new bathroom sink, and a crown to replace a fracturing molar in my maxilla. Porcelain seemed just about perfect. But furniture?

    I guess the giftie list inventors figure that by 17 years the kids and/or dogs have pretty much ruined anything nice you ever had. Maybe it would be a nice anniversary present to sit on a sofa with no crumbs or dog hairs. To have a chair that only you have read in. To get some new mattresses that haven’t any springs poking up. The Spouse and I don’t NEED any new furniture. I mean, it just isn’t a priority right now.

    The 17th giftie seems better than the 16th though. Last year the Spouse and I were supposed to purchase (or be given) silver hollowware. I guess I don’t know or care what that is. I am pretty sure we justified the purchase of a new double door LG gas range. That’s silver. And hollow. Huh. What do you know, we are instinctive anniversary gifters.

    I cruised ahead on the gift list to see what goodies will come on future anniversaries. Jewels. Land. Books. Luxuries of any kind (ran out of ideas I guess). Then, in year 44, groceries. My god. Groceries. That’s something to look forward to. For my 44th wedding anniversary I’m going to be poor enough, hungry enough that groceries seem like a really great gift. Or I’ll be a survivalist hoarder and groceries will be an even more satisfying gift.

    Yesterday the Spouse and I celebrated 17 years of being married by having saffron poached salmon and mussels cooked on our hollowware stove, eaten on our heritage Grandma’s dining room table furniture. If only I had also been using that new porcelain crown.

    The Spouse brought me a packet of peanut butter cups. I ate them. I bought him a lottery ticket, giving him nothing or millions of dollars. Seventeen years. Where ever has the time gone?