Last week Sandy and I celebrated 14 years of marriage. We married October 6, 2001, less than a month after the towers fell, and a week after Sandy’s 28th birthday (September 26).
Just under four years later, on August 16, 2005, we had Eliot. For years the end of summer felt like it ramped up (or more slid down) to our anniversary. We’d get through the summer, celebrate Eliot’s birthday, then Sandy’s birthday, and then wrap it up with our anniversary. Then in 2011 five days after our anniversary on October 11, we had Auden. Best 10th anniversary present ever, right? The thing is, after that, the anniversary just sort of got lost between birthdays.
This wasn’t the first year that it was held in a low-level of awareness, but this was the first year that I totally forgot the anniversary altogether. Ok, that makes it sounds like I TOTALLY screwed up our anniversary. It really wasn’t that bad. But you’ll need a little back story to understand the situation.
Roll the film back to 2005, a few weeks after Eliot was born. Eliot was not a happy infant. He was a miserable infant. All of the photos of him smiling and gurgling from his first year had to be photoshopped. Sandy stayed home with us the first four weeks and took the daily runs to Target to buy some new panacea, but eventually Sandy had to go back to work. The only thing I knew that worked to get him to sleep was to walk. So I spent hours stumbling sleeplessly up and down the sidewalks of Berkeley with a squalling creature strapped into one of the fifteen or so carriers that I had purchased in the first weeks of his life. At about his sixth week, trudging along one day I saw this equally dilapidated and drained woman stumbling along the sidewalk across the street with her own wailing and wrapped infant. As if I were a zombie perking up at the sight of a fresh victim, I shuffle-jaywalked, thrust my hand out and raised my voice over the chorus of angry baby shrieks and introduced myself. As it turned out, we lived just around the corner from each other. A marathon of walking and numerous bottles of wine (and years) later, Jeanne has grown to be one of my dearest and most cherished friends. Fortunately our husbands like each other, and our kids are still the best of friends. In the end, I credit colic with bringing us together.
So, when our kids turned ten this last August, I suggested that she and I should celebrate our 10th anniversary somehow: dinner, a spa-trip, a girls weekend, ideally, about six weeks after the kids’ birthdays, to truly celebrate 10 years. So we look at dates, agreed the weekend of the 2nd/3rd would work. To my mind that was squeezed nicely between celebrating Sandy’s and Auden’s birthdays. When she, her husband, and kid came over for dinner one night and we were brainstorming ideas, I turned to Sandy to confirm would that weekend work? He looks at me, paused, and then said, “Well, I guess it’s only our 14th.” I sat there trying to grock what he meant by 14th before blanching, raising my eyebrows innocently and plastering a wide, apologetic grin on my face. Yep. I had attempted to schedule my anniversary of friendship getaway for the weekend of my wedding anniversary. Wow. Fail.
Fortunately, the happy ending is that I rented an AirBnB in San Francisco for two nights. The first night, Sandy and I stayed in the city. The second night, Jeanne and I did. I got two lovely dinners and a bit of time alone in the city out of it. Phew.
10 years knowing this wonderful woman!