I'm saying it out loud. I want to be able to pull off a
number like this when John and I have a party for our fortieth. The couple is in their sixties, which is what we will be in 2020, and their feet move in sync like bicycle wheels spinning
across the boardwalk. They seem calm, not as if they were using up five hundred calories a minute doing the Lindy Hop.
It raises my heart rate to have things to look forward to, rather than the "same old same old" that creeps in with the tenacity of pachysandra on a Wednesday morning in September. Yes, I know the endings of all John's stories, and yes I can predict what he will say when I ask if he wants to sing together. Today I will wash the same clothes I have
laundered hundreds of times before, and wipe the counter that dares to get crummy yet again.
There are not a barrage of surprises after thirty four years. In fact I am not sure of the last time John surprised me. But then I have not surprised him either.
Being able to predict the weather, or when your family will be hungry, or how a two year old will feel about slipping in the mud affords a margin of safety. It's comfortable, like pulling
out your favorite sweater when the first chilly evenings saunter in.
But woven into the familiar, the expected, the known, is the possibility of wonder. Like learning to dance for an anniversary party.
