Last week, David and I celebrated our 8 year anniversary. The festivities culminated in the presentation, by Primo, of the above confection --a nutella sandwich topped with mini chocolate chip cookies. A fresh take on the anniversary cake, prepared by my son himself. He wanted to put sprinkles on but I deterred him, thinking that the biggest present he could give me was sparing me the headache of cleaning sprinklers out of every corner of the kitchen. Magnanimously, he agreed.
We'd pre-emptively celebrated our anniversary on our trip to Tennessee, where David's parents watched the kids while he took me to the fanciest joint in town, overlooking the river. The big selling point of this place is that a meat peddler comes to your table with raw slabs of beef and lets you watch as he slices of a chunk for you to eat. Then they cook, of course. Still, it grossed me out a bit. Don't see how that's a perk. I'm not the sort of foodie who wants to slaughter my own pig. I don't want to know where my food comes from. I want to pretend it had no life previous to my ingesting it. I want to pretend it was born drenched in bernaise sauce.
David enjoyed the peddler, anyway. And I enjoyed the Asti Spumanti Sparkling Wine and we both enjoyed some time alone.
Every year, on our anniversary, David and I write letters to each other in the empty pages in the guest book from our wedding. The tradition began because I spent a ridiculous amount of money buying that silken guest book -- one of the few parts of my wedding that wasn't a bargain basement deal -- and it drove me insane to see all the empty, expensive pages. The moral to this story is: sometimes being a cheapskate can pay off because it gave birth to the best tradition that David and I share. Every year, regardless of how exhausted or busy or pissed at each other we happen to be at the moment, we stop and assess the State of The Marriage. And regardless of the State of the Marriage, we always find that we're happy to still be in it, glad we took the vows, and more committed than we were on our wedding day. Our letters always end with the surprising revelation on both our parts, that we not only still love the other person, but somehow love them more. That's not to say we don't also hate each other more, but I defy you to show me a couple married for nearly a decade with a bunch of rugrats underfoot who don't hate each other at least part of the time. I'm not the first to observe that its a thin line between love and hate. Frequently, I love hating David and just as frequently, I hate loving him. And the good news is, I know he feels precisely the same way.
And I bet William and Catherine do too, or will anyway, if they make it eight years.
And now please, raise your coffee cups: here's to holy matrimony and another eight years of it!
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