September 14, 2016

• This Day in History

  This is an updated version of a blog I posted on Xanga five years ago.

  Today: Brett is in Delaware and I’m in Michigan. I’m planning to pamper myself with a pedicure before slaving over the stove all day canning salsa.

  1 year ago today: We were at the mid-point of our big 35^th anniversary road trip west across the northern plains to Seattle, south down the Redwood Highway to Santa Monica, and east across Route 66 back to Michigan. On this day last year, we drove through a giant redwood tree.

  

  3 years ago today: Brett drew an anniversary masterpiece on the paper tablecloth at the local plunge (one step above a dive) where we ate lunch. We ordered the only non-fried food on the menu (seriously – they deep-fried hamburgers there!) but discovered they were still gut-bombs an hour later when we were half a mile into a hike in the woods, twelve miles from home.

  

  6 years ago today: We were on a geocaching blitz in Columbus, Indiana. We had dinner at a little Italian restaurant and I drank too much wine.  We ate cake at the hotel that night.

  

  11 years ago today: We were in a little B&B on the Maine coast. We’d gone whale watching the day before (a change of plans because of the weather forecast). We spent this day exploring the Marginal Way and had a lovely lobster dinner at a fancy outdoor restaurant that night.

  

  12 years ago today: We went out to dinner and then to a movie. It’s really hard to find a good movie this time of year; the only thing remotely interesting to us was Napoleon Dynamite. We were the only ones in the audience that night so, with the theater to ourselves, we were able to heckle the movie. I think we enjoyed it more than we would have otherwise.

  

  15 years ago today: The horrors of 9/11 were still being televised nonstop. We didn't feel like celebrating.

  16 years ago today: We awoke to the gentle clip-clop of horses hooves going down Market Street on Mackinac Island. We spent the day walking, or sitting on benches looking at the lake and the lighthouse. That night we took a carriage to a restaurant that had once been a very rich little girl’s playhouse. It was so dark inside we couldn’t see what we were eating. It tasted good, but it felt like twigs and bits of pinecone.

  

  26 years ago today: We were temporarily living with my parents in Arkansas. We were going to take Krysten out for lunch and miniature golf, but she didn't care about our "dumb old anniversary." We had dinner at Red Lobster and went to the cinema at the mall to see Naked Gun 2 1/2. There were two other people in the audience. Bad movies are a bit of an anniversary theme for us.

  

  31 years ago today: I was alone in Hawaii with a five-month-old daughter. Brett was on his way to the North Pole on a submarine.

  

  35 years ago today: We stopped at the McDonald’s drive-thru and sat in our living room eating Big Macs, drinking cheap wine and playing The Dark Tower, a cutting edge board game on which we’d spent all our extra money.

  

  36 years ago today: We were on top of Mt. Sequoya. It was hot and we were in the middle of a drought. My sister sang songs by John Denver and Bread.

  

  I walked up the aisle between rustic wooden benches to the strains of The Wedding March being played on a violin. My veil wasn’t anchored properly and kept slipping off my head. When we knelt for the prayer, my sister jammed the combs holding the veil into my head so it wouldn’t fly off when Brett lifted the veil off my face for our first kiss as husband and wife.

  

  We had a cake my aunt made for us and punch my mother made.

  

  My great-aunt and great-uncle drove us away in their brand new Lincoln town car while my cousins stood with handfuls of shaving cream and who knows what else, too afraid to use it. We laughed all the way to my aunt and uncle’s ranch where we’d hidden our cars. We changed clothes and retrieved Brett’s car, discovered we’d forgotten a set of keys and went back to his apartment to find them. While we were there, we opened wedding presents. As we headed off to our honeymoon cabin on top of Mt. Winslow, we realized we were both starving. Our ceremony had started at 3 PM and we’d both been too nervous to eat lunch beforehand. So we stopped at McDonald’s on the way out of town and ate in the car as rain began to fall, ending the drought. We felt the welcome rain was blessing our marriage.

  

  I've been married to this goofy guy for 36 years. It just keeps getting better.

  

   

  • 12:17 pm
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