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