Milestones
There are no rituals to mark the occasion. For fifteen years, we didn't even have a date in particular that we could circle on a calendar -- there were too many, and which was the important one? There is the morning in March when I first woke up beside him, more comfortable than I'd been in my life; the August evening, sultry and full of stars in my memory, when he said in his half-shy way that this was pretty great, and did I want to make a habit of it? There's the day at the end of June when we bowed to the inevitable and moved in together.
Or, now, there's the date in November, when we collapsed in a tacky motel room in Vermont, laughing like kids who'd gotten away with buying cigarettes, look, we can pass for grownups now! We'd been putting it off, because why the hell should we bother; and we went for it finally, because why the hell not?
But it doesn't feel any more significant than the others, now that it approaches for the first time. A little inward smile, when I think of it; a little flicker of incredulous pleasure. That long, already?
I think, in a way, this is how it ought to be -- the small remembrances, rather than building up the anniversary of one hectic day into something impossibly romantic, and then, half the time, forgetting it. Maybe this reminds us better of the way joy really comes, every so often and in small ways.