Yesterday Bud and I celebrated our wedding anniversary. Thirteen years is long enough to recognize how fortunate you are to still have butterflies for the one you love. It's long enough to have experienced your share of silly arguments, to have taken a night train from Calcutta to Delhi, and to have made a new home on each coast too many times to count. It's long enough to have held hands while taking in the splendor of the Sistine Chapel, to raise a dog family, to turn your beliefs inside out, and to sense the tone. It's long enough to understand how blessed you are to have one another to count on, to accept that luck has had a lot to do with it, and to realize how very naive you were when you married. It's long enough to have comforted one another through losses that seem to change your very chemical composition, to watch your first chapter of adulthood come to an end, and to have eaten some pretty great pizza together.
To mark the occasion we walked over to Main St. for lunch at a favorite Mexican restaurant, stopping along the way to meander through the open gates of the community garden. The recent rains had given way to a day with clear blue skies that demanded to be taken seriously. We marveled at the cabbage, dahlias, and brightly colored cosmos; the flower Spanish priests grew in their Mission gardens in Mexico. Butterflies slowly sunned their wings on yellow poppies. The bees were numerous and we studied their work in quiet reverence. A ladybug affixed herself to Bud's shirt and remained there for hours until we ushered her to a new spot in a potted geranium at home. After lunch and a salty-strong margarita for me, we dropped by our favorite used book and record store, leaving with Mary Oliver and John Coltrane. The thrift store nearby offered a needed thermos for our next camping trip. As our day came to a close we rented a tandem bike for the first time and rode along the beach path to Mailbu where we sat and laughed at the pelicans dive bombing the waves for fish.
Thirteen years is long enough to know you want more time.
