the greatest adventure

Wednesday was our 25th wedding anniversary. It was silver. That is the tradition apparently. Somehow in this lifetime I missed the instruction book. I am the one who forgets anniversaries. And so jerry began reminding me about this event several months ago. The conversation went something like this.

Twenty-five years. August 27th. It’s a big deal. A meaningful look would come darting my way. A warning. This is not something to forget.
I know it is. Of course I won’t forget!!
Should we have a party?
Okay if that’s what you want.
We are supposed to have a party.
Okay. But I don’t really like parties. I mean if we have the people we really love then that will be a dinner not a party.
Disgruntled sigh from jerry’s corner
Okay, I said again, obviously something very wrong with me. We will have the party.
But then in a tiny whiny voice I added. Why do people whom we hardly know care about our wedding anniversary? Do we have to do that?
It turns out no; we don’t have to do that. We are having a dinner with our dearest friends and family who are close enough to come. It’s truly wonderful and here’s the thing.

I was never the girl who planned my wedding. Who dreamed of the dress and the house to follow. I dreamed of wandering and adventure. I dreamed of no fixed abode. Of no fixed man. There were so many cute ones. Why settle on one. I dreamed about the adventure of life and if there was someone with me then how grand. And then I met jerry. In England, and he just seemed cuter than the rest. We went to Sicily. We had such a grand time. The dream of adventure seemed to pale without him, and so how startling that I was the one who got myself married, to a guy from England, when I was 24. And then immediately began popping out these most precious people who were my children. I mean, what a thought. When I was 30 with two babies I realized it was not a thought but my life. I woke up with a start. I had given up adventure for domesticity. Huh. Not my plan at all.

So waking up, or what I thought of as waking up, can be a bit uncomfortable for those around you. They are all still sleepy and woozy and cozy in the former dream. They usually aren’t so keen for one person in the pod to start rearranging the covers and finally springing from the bed altogether and declaring that the light has dawned and it was time for us all to wake up! Snap snap!! But Jerry, looked at me silently, and slowly climbed out of his dream and said. Okay. Now what. Always. Every time.
No matter what gauntlet I have thrown down. He has calmly picked it up. Silently but sweetly shown me to be wrong over and over again in my assumptions about love and that the unruly wildness at the heart of me does not have to be tamed in order to love.

So really this is what I come to. I am married to the most extraordinary man. Some consciousness greater than my understanding obviously gave me guidance. I have been a ruthless rearranger of the covers. I have behaved in ways that would have caused almost every other person I have ever met to abandon this dream of living with me a long time ago. But jerry peele has stayed. He has stuck true to his word. He has been the most loyal and abiding friend.
We have moved from London, to Bermuda, to NYC to a farm in ancramdale and millions of houses in between. And just as many incarnations of ourselves.
He has loved me through thick and thin. And because of him I have learned that the great adventure I thought I was searching for has always been right here. The great adventure is love.
I suppose I go on and on about unconditional love. Te ammo. And here it is.
Wow.
I am humbled with gratitude.
Happy anniversary, jerry peele
Te amo truly. Te amo te amo.
Your errant and untraditional little wife
iva
Xxx

slideshow of teo images

this just seems like fun to me, to add a slide show of the photos from mexico and so here they are.

flying from one dream to another.

pyramid of the moon at first light
spirit dog

the church during fiesta
first light on pyramid of the sun.  

 

Last night i returned from a ten day trip to mexico.   

in mexico i was on a journey inside a journey, led by my friend lee and staying at his vision of a  of perfection which he has brought to life,  called the dreaming house.  

the dreaming house sits at the foot of the pyramids, teotihuacan, in the village of san sebastian.  the dreaming house is beyond a dream come true and the village is small and the pyramids, remind you of the dream of heaven on earth.   spending ten days there on a journey is perfection in every way possible and  flying back home can be startling.  it actually has a name,  this disorientation.  it's called re- entry.   because  sometimes the bumping back to your reality can be hard.   but this time that wasn't so.   a total stranger cushioned my landing.  

here is the story.   a lot of words,  but i hope you can get the image.   

i arrived at night and jerry picked me up in newark, new jersey.   we stopped for food at a rest stop on highway 87  before driving back up to the farm.   the rest stop was packed with people.   and somehow the burger king and the dunkin' donuts and s'baro's pizza had all run out of food. this was a new experience  but i was floating and still in my teo dream and so all these throngs of people flowed under the fluorescent lights,  with no expression on their faces or looking grumpy about the long lines and scant amount of food.    a land of the zombies kind of thing.   i stood in wonder with my mouth forming a little O and watched and marveled as if i was in  a 3d movie and the world of people flowed past like a river.  jerry stood close beside me as if i might actually begin to float away or something.    

   

we  settled on a slice of pizza and got into the line.  i  began to giggle and kind of dance around.  well sort of a cringing dancing laughing kind of thing about how the food was inedible anyway but i was hungry and there wasn't very much food and  i didn't really care.  i was watching my little zombie  movie.  all glowy and laughing and detached.  

"my god,  we are in america,  and no where has it's usual abundance of inedible food, on the day i have decided to eat what ever i can get.  hee hee.  this is funny.  " 

 

i laughed.  jerry laughed.  

and a stout little man,  with a balding head and glasses piped up from behind us in the line. 

"i'm watching the music of your conversation."  

i turned to him in wonder.   

how amazing!  one of the extra's in my movie was engaging me in conversation! 

"what do you mean?"

"i watch people and their body language and how they speak is like music."

"oh i love that.  how we move and speak is music." i said and probably did some dorky thing like clap my hands together as i responded.  

 well he wasn't done with us,  and the pizza wasn't ready and so we began to chat.   he was a charming man,  funny ideas about this and that and inside i was thinking what a brilliant character to begin speaking in my 3 d movie of the rest stop on 87 north.  and so to keep the conversation going,  i asked him what he did.   he said he was an opera singer.  

"my teacher was pavaroti's understudy.  i'm just an amateur,  but i know what i'm doing."

"wow that's cool. that's why you see music everywhere!" 

he smiled.   and then he stepped in closer so his face was right in mine and he opened his mouth and began to sing!!   big!!   he sang big!!  in a beautiful opera voice just for me, in the line for sbaro's pizza in the rest stop on highway 87,  in new jersey!!  this is true!!  i swear swear swear!!  

 a rotund  little opera singer began singing an aria just for me.  .  singing me back into to the dream of america.  

i think the world may have stopped.  i'm not sure.  but  his song gathered gusto.   he began moving his arms,  gesturing towards jerry as he sang, 

"she is  the woman of your  dreams...."   and jerry,  because he returned from teo less than a week ago,  replied "that's true."   my movie was rocking now.  

the opera singers  voice gathered strength again and rose above the crowds and hovered around the awful lighting and fell down on the throngs of  sad looking faces.  a fat little man doling out pure joy.  

jerry and i stood riveted ,  hardly daring to breathe,  in case he turned out to be an apparition and vanished.   but he was in the flesh and when he finished the song he told me to kiss jerry and so that is what i did.  

now that for sure is love.  for the opera singer and my husband.   

the te amo kind.  

perhaps the rest of my life can rest in that utterly divine scene in front of the glass counter of the s'baro's booth.   

we oohed and ahhed and told him how wonderful he was and  gathered our cheese pizza slices and floated back to the car.  

i didn't ask his name and so for the opera man in the rest stop in new jersey,  this is for you,  where ever you are.  

te amo.   te amo.  

 thank you so much for flying me from one dream of heaven on earth back to america and showing me that even a grimy rest stop can be  a little piece of heaven if you look at it that way.   I have laughed all day.  i am still laughing with wonder and joy. 

 

thank you my opera singing stranger!!!!  and thank you lee and emily and sage and all of you who were in teo with me,  thank you  for everything,  all beyond words!!

xxx