Haiku from my son

This sits taped to my monitor, created by Dylan almost 2 years ago. He amazes me.
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Mom

What came before me
A knowing woman of love
A mom strong and true

Dylan
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Is there anything more amazing than our children?

Wedding Ring, Anniversary Ring

I am not a huge fan of jewelry. Certainly, I can admire it on its merits - I adore looking at creative and beautiful objects no matter what their function. But, for myself, jewelry is troublesome. My loving husband has, several times, gone to inordinate lengths, to find and purchase for me the most beautiful necklace. I have a few of these exquisite finds. And I just absolutely treasure them.

But, I can't deal with anything around my neck. So....a problem. I have a few symbolic earrings and I religiously wear a tangle of bracelets that bang around and are inscribed and remind me to care about the things I care about. But.

I do wear two very important pieces of jewelry every day. My wedding ring and my 10th anniversary ring. These rings live with me day in and day out and how they came to be in my life and what they mean to me maybe say something about who I am.

First, our wedding rings. We were both graduate students when Mark and I got married. We were both adamant that going into debt for a ring was crazy. So. Simple gold bands. The lovely guy at Shane Company actually had to go to the mat to get us a pretty box because our level of ring didn't generally warrant such fluff. Many years of marriage and neither one of us ever regretted the simple gold band. Both rings together cost less than $100.

Fast forward.

By the time our tenth anniversary approached, we'd been through the ringer. A lot of life had come at us very fast and things were not only tense, they were, suddenly, no longer guaranteed. We really didn't know if we'd make it to 11.

So, we threw a party. A hellacious party. Catered, my father flew in from Toronto (a first), and the distinguished man who'd driven down to Oregon to marry us agreed to a re-do. We lived in a beautiful water-view house on the west side of our island and everything was wonderful.

Except it was the just about the hardest time in our marriage. We were struggling with so much anger and betrayal and grief and hope and sorrow. We were trying to pick ourselves up from near tragedy, we were trying to part the clouds so we could see what the future might look like. And we didn't even know that three weeks later, Mark would be told he had prostate cancer.

But, I knew we needed a celebration. We needed a party that toasted all that was the good we created and did not shine a light on the struggle we were wrestling with.

We had that party - that amazing gathering where Dr. Hubert Locke arrived to give his thanks that this union he'd created 10 years prior thrived in beauty, that party where my father flew from Toronto to share in his daughter's joy, that gathering of friends, old and new, where fantastic piano music flowed joyfully throughout the house, where I wore my anniversary ring in public for the first time.

Sometimes I take my wedding ring off, to make dough or because it's a little tight now. I never, ever take my anniversary ring off except to clean it. Why?

Well. My anniversary ring is made of platinum. It has 10 stones, one for each year we were together before. Six sapphires (my favorite) and 4 near-perfect diamonds. I love this - that the diamonds and the sapphires total 10 - which was a complete accident. But, my anniversary ring is a touchstone to me in a way that my wedding ring can never be.

Two things.

First, when you are in your twenties and you get married, simple is easy. Not to say I was glib - I wasn't. But. That first, gold, ring represents a promise. A real, serious, promise. It's an important reminder of the beginning of the story, the road we started down together. The things we swore.

But.

Here's what Iove about my platinum anniversary ring. It's really beat up. Yes, it has sapphires and diamonds, tiny as they are, but the band is beat to shit. I wear it every day and I love it so much because for me it represents a time in our marriage when things where NOT promising, when the future was NOT bright, but we hung in there. We didn't particularly like each other but we said, hey, we are in this for the long haul so let's delay these life decisions til later.

I'm glad we had the wisdom to do that. And, when I look at my anniversary ring, misshaped and warped, I love it all the more. Marriages are hard and their outcomes are uncertain. I like to look at my left hand and see the promise and then look at my right hand and see the reality. The beautiful, beaten-up, real-life reality.

Next summer will be Anniversary Number 17. I can't wait.

Giving Thanks for 20 Years

Here in the U.S., Thanksgiving is just around the corner. For me, it starts being "just around the corner" come November 1 because it's my very favorite holiday. I think other countries and cultures have a broad palette of celebrations, but here ours are mostly based either in religion or patriotism, save one: Thanksgiving. And 2008 marks the 20th year I've hosted dinner on this day.

I really like the idea of a day set aside for being grateful. A day to remember where we came from, think about where we'd like to go. A day to reflect on our good fortunes and send thoughts of thanks and goodwill to both those who have helped us and to those who need help.

Officially, Thanksgiving is the day we Americans remember that without the kindness and generosity of the First Americans, the Native Americans, our little experiment with the New World would have been over not much after it was begun. Of course, how the puritans, explorers, and opportunists would go forward and repay that generosity is another story. On Thanksgiving, we bow our heads in gratitude to those who shared their food and their seeds so that the settlers might survive.

Mythology aside, the relationships between those who were already here and those who came later were never so cut-and-dried as to have been either steadfast allies or sworn enemies. Like most of history, the truth was more complex, with individual and community alliances and disputes ebbing and flowing across the full spectrum of entanglements. There were trade agreements and raids, there was good faith and bad. For an excellent, fresh perspective on this era, I recommend Russell Shorto's Island at the Center of the World.

But that is history. Today we think of Thanksgiving in a few ways. The only two-day holiday on our calendar. Tortuous air travel. Insufferable relatives. A break from college before exams. The acceptable, although by no means common, moment to begin hearing Christmas music. Seeing our children. Seeing our parents. Shopping. And, obviously, food.

It's ironic that the way we choose to celebrate salvation from starvation is gluttony. Seems a little disrespectful somehow, doesn't it? Nonetheless, for a food-focused gal like me, That Thursday in November is nirvana. Strangely, however, each year Thanksgiving becomes less and less about the food I serve and more and more about the people at the table.

That table's gotten smaller over the years. The orphans and lost souls of our twenties and early thirties have gone on to find partners, have children, build lives and traditions of their own. But, around my table are many of the people who are truly vital to me. My wonderful husband and breathtaking son. My adventurous mom. My walking and kevetching buddy - my GGF (good girlfriend) as she calls us, and her family.

And, the woman I've shared that table with for 20 years. I invited Elise down to my mom's house in 1988 after she had just moved to Albuquerque and had yet to make many friends. We somehow managed a respectable feast on 1 stovetop burner and a sort of working oven. It was a long, fun day. We've never missed a Thanksgiving dinner together since, and we've got enough Turkey Day Adventure stories to fill a whole other blog.

When we started this tradition, we didn't know it would become a tradition. But year after year, we propped each other up through some pretty tough times, including two interstate moves. Thanksgiving became the touchstone of a shared life always in motion, always moving forward. We were two 20-somethings in New Mexico who met slopping prime rib in a "family style" restaurant. Then, college, moving, my marriage, graduate school, moving, her marriage, and beautiful sons for us both. Just like that, we're two 40-somethings in Washington.

We lead very different lives now, she and I. She and her husband are staunch city dwellers and have the worst ferry karma of anyone I know, making almost every visit to our island farm a comedy of errors. They both work full time at demanding professional jobs and are well-accomplished. They have lots of friends and lots of engagements.

Mark and I live in the country and between the two of us have maybe one foot on the career ladder. We break out in hives if we have to stay in the city more than a few hours. We don't get out much.

But, Elise's life and mine are as entwined as sisters'. We share a history and a journey and, consequently, a core. We know each other inside and out (and still love each other!) and know there's strength out there if we make a mistake or hit hard times. She's got my back; I've got hers.

We all know Thanksgiving is the time to pause and reflect on what we are grateful for. A toast to 20 years of friendship and the rich, satisfying full life I've been fortunate to build with the wind of love, hers and others', at my back.