An aspect of one of my jobs is to celebrate anniversaries. This is sweet, because it is a handy excuse to tell people that we care about them. Sometimes I send a card, or even deliver flowers. I list local ones in the church newsletter with dates and names. 

 

Yet the imperfections niggle at me. I make mistakes. When I see someone's anniversary in the database, it will have a year, say, 1974. I subtract 75 from 100, to get 25, and then add the current year, which is 24, getting a total of 49. But sometimes I get distracted by the date they were married on, which might be the 21st, like today, and will end up with 46. June is a joyful month, in that it is bursting with such festivities, and yet it balloons the odds of me getting it wrong. Which I don't like to do with something as dear as an anniversary. 

 

Then there are other varieties of errors. I once included a woman's anniversary, not knowing that her husband had died and she remarried. Then there was the time I paired someone with her brother-in-law. We have not even mentioned the absence of names in the database, and everyone who works with those behemoths of information knows the possibilities there. 

 

But sometimes I do manage to get the correct people paired, and properly acknowledged. Which I take no credit for. 

 

Today is John's and my anniversary. We will sing a song together, and look at the photo above our bed that our kids had enlarged. It includes both of our mothers, but none of us are looking at the camera. It is fuzzy, because it was probably taken with an instamatic. There are no professional photos of our wedding, as that was not the standard back then, and anyway John and I chose to be nonstandard. The ceremony was on a hill, in the morning, with folding chairs and an altar of twelve stones. I made our clothes of wool and cotton, having dyed the fabric with onion skins.  A friend crafted metal buttons of the progression from a seed to a flowering plant. Our friends sang, and played recorders.  When the bible was closed, we strode, barefoot, to the reception in my aunt's backyard. My sisters made the carrot cakes. 

 

Our anniversary celebration happened earlier this week when we took Benjamin to see Inside Out 2. Which made me laugh, and cry, though not at the same time. I held John's warm hand in the dark, and marveled at the journey we have traveled together. Forgive the spoiler, but Benjamin gave an audible gasp when Riley snuck into the coach's office to read her notebook. 

 

"No!" He could not bear to watch. 

 

It was a relief to all of us when Riley's Anxiety let go long enough to let her apologize to her friends. 

 

Which reminds me. If I have missed your anniversary, or confused the dates, I am sorry.