“Do you mind if we open this bottle of red wine for our anniversary?” Evan asks me as I set the kids’ soup bowls on their trays.
I think he is asking me in part since I’ve been going on and on about how I read that alcohol suppresses the immune system and increases the chances of pneumonia. But I think a glass of red wine seems a reasonable way to celebrate.
“Sure! Let’s do it.” I say.
“It’s a Malbec, from Costco,” he says as he opens the drawer to get the wine opener.
I wonder if it seems less fancy since it’s from Costco, or it seems spot on. We’re certainly not making extra shopping trips to wine and liquor stores in the middle of COVID-19 quarantining. Although, that honestly isn’t a change the last few months have brought.
Evan reads the description on the back of the wine bottle in a dramatic voice—perfectly balanced fruit notes and aged oak spice. He pours two glasses.
Then there is a great deal of commotion to get the children up and into their chairs.
Today is also Jackson’s half birthday. Four and a half still seems young, but it is awfully close to five. And five seems big to me. Lily turned two exactly two weeks ago.
That also is still young, but very much not a baby anymore. They are full of opinions. Jackson is not thrilled at having soup tonight instead of leftover brats from Memorial Day Weekend. But he is satisfied at having me cut up the brat into little bits and put it in the soup.
“Me, Me!” Lily says, indicating that she wants what Jackson wants. I’m not sure that she knows what she is even requesting. I tell her yes, yes, but then don’t add any brats to her soup. She is satisfied.
There is more commotion as the right spoon—the duckie spoon!—is found. Then, Lily wants a milk glass like Jackson. Lily doesn’t actually get any milk in her milk glass; she gets water. (This is not to be confused with the water in her water glass.) But, finally, everyone has what they need.
We sing our Eastertide grace: Allelu, Allelu, Alleluia, Praise Ye The Lord.
Then Evan lifts his stemless wine glass and says, “cheers to 13 years” and we clink our glasses.
Jackson lifts his milk glass, “me too” and of course Lily echoes “me too!”
For a second, Evan is confused, he has mentally moved on to dinner and the work it is to get our children to eat their bites.
“They want to clink glasses with us,” I say.
“Oh yeah!” Evan says and enthusiastically milk cups and wine glasses are clinked.
And for the brief second where all four of our glasses are touching, I think this is the picture of our anniversary this year. Life right now is anniversary dinner at home, with a two-wine glasses and two-milk cups toast.
Later I will think back to that little moment tucked inside the fairly ordinary dinner, and I wonder if in 13 years I will look back and miss those milk glasses and joy of clinking and toasting us. Or perhaps I will simply appreciate that we could leave our high schoolers and have a proper date. Or at the very least, we could have a few stretches of uninterrupted conversations over our anniversary dinner. I also wonder about the bride I was 13 years ago, if I would be happy with the chaotic joy and work of this anniversary. I’m not sure I really thought much about it, to be honest.
Evan has surprised us with a pint of coconut vanilla ice cream. On his way home from work, he had to stand in line outside of Whole Foods until the right number of people could go in. I had talked about making ice cream that night, but I was very happy to have store bought ice cream.
I had taken most of nap time to make the soup. It didn’t seem exactly timely, to be making soup on the first hot day of the year. Our little Wisconsin children had wilted in the 88 degree and humid day, flushed cheeks and sad little whimpers about it being so hot as we came home from the park midday.
The kids eat their soup with not too much fuss. That’s their anniversary present to us. All I had to do was sing them the whole Old MacDonald Had A Farm and Other Favorite Children’s Songs book, or as Lily calls it “Ole Donny” against the more classy background music of a music channel inspired by Kings of Convenience.
Then we sit in the living room, on the floor, and share spoonfuls of ice cream and watch a Rick Steves episode on Burgundy. Jackson was the one who declared that we needed Rick Steves and ice cream, although he did suggest that we eat outside under the trees and watch it on our phones.
The kids last nearly to the end of the 22 minute episode, which is more than normal. And then they are off to ride scooters outside with Evan while I clean up.
To be fair, this was not our only anniversary celebration. We had pockets of time over the long weekend the three days before when we read our wedding homily and played our favorite boardgame “Dominion.” It had been a very nice weekend, with forecasted rain that never materialized.
We took three lovely walks, one through some Milwaukee neighborhoods, one at one of our favorite lake shore state parks along Lake Michigan (complete with the first picnic of the year), and a county park around a little lake about 30 minutes away.
And really, a hike and some ice cream is often the hallmark of our dates. We got engaged in a city park over a picnic. The first time Evan went shopping by himself after we had been married a few weeks, he brought me home a pint of Haagen-Dazs vanilla ice cream, and I remember being floored that he would get something so extravagant for a regular day.
I often say that our very best date was after work one day when we both tutored together for 8 hours on a Saturday. We walked four miles to Chipotle, where we ate, then bought a pint of coconut milk cherry amaretto ice cream, which we ate on the four mile walk home. And then, spontaneously, we went to a 10:00pm show of the first Avengers. (That last bit, is so extremely unusual for us, but we were young and able to sleep uninterrupted for 8 hours even if we went to bed at 1 am.)
One of the great truths of young parenthood is this: you can do all the things, but you cannot do them all at once.
This year it looked like celebrating our anniversary in little thirty-minute segments here and there. And in the grander scheme, it means that some years are wine glasses and milk cup toasts, and some years are trips to wineries in California (that was our 10-year).
I think this is a lesson that I keep having to return to, because there is a tendency to collapse our memories down. We remember only the mountain peaks, and when we look back at the mountain range from far away those peaks look close together. That somehow I could trick myself into thinking that our pre-child life was nothing but eight mile date walks and late-night movies. It was not. We did that date once.
The flip-side is that I will probably remember only the sweet parts of this anniversary too.
I will remember how Lily says “thank-you-you’re-welcome” any time we hand her something, or how she always reminds Evan to make sure and kiss me when he’s handing out goodbye kisses before he goes to work.
I’ll remember how Jackson wanted to hear more and more of the story of the summer before we got engaged—Evan working to buy my ring and me working at a summer camp—long after Lily’s attention span had waned.
I’ll remember Evan holding my hand as we read through our wedding homily and saying “I think we’re really good at friendship. We’re good friends.” Or how he told me to finish up the Rick Steves by myself, and he took the kids out the door for bubbles and the evening scooter ride.
The power of those sweet things reminds me of an art project I did in elementary school. My art teacher had us make a cornucopia. She had plain colored markers and florescent bright ones. The lesson was on how highlights worked. She explained that if we only used the florescent ones, the whole picture wouldn’t seem very bright. But if we used the regular ones, and the made highlights, those highlights would stand out as very bright and make the whole picture seem more real.
Or a few weeks ago when we were baking Lily’s birthday cake, Jackson wanted to taste the vanilla extract. I remember as a child being baffled by how something that smelled so amazing, could taste so bitter. But a little vanilla extract makes the whole thing taste amazing.
Like wine. Like vanilla ice cream. Like 13 years of marriage and friendship and adventure.
Happy Anniversary! We love Dominion, too!
Yay! Thanks Caroline! It is such a fun game…and so many expansion sets!