Anniversaries

Bear with me.  This is one of those posts in which I am going to try to convince myself to be in love with something.  The title tells you that the subject is anniversaries.  The last wedding anniversary I "celebrated" was in 2002.  The subsequent ones have been an exercise in survival, as my partner-in-love is no longer here.  Today's anniversary seems to have added weight.  It was thirty years ago today that Pete and I married.  If it was 29 years ago or 31 years ago, I would be handling it much better.  But this is what we do:  we attach meaning to our base-ten system.  (That's probably not the right phrase.  Pete was the math teacher, not me.)  I like to quote Miles Dentrell of thirtysomething when he said, "The decimalization of time is so arbitrary."  But it's what we do.

So three decades ago, Pete and I got married.  It was a lovely day.

And it was a good cake.  Believe it or not, I still have the icing roses from that cake somewhere in the recesses of my freezer.  I guess we never got around to eating them on an anniversary.  And what do I do with them now?  It seems wrong to throw them in the garbage.  As I say every year, "Maybe next year."

But I want to put my sorrow aside and fall in love with this anniversary.  Earlier today, I recalled a poem that I wrote on our honeymoon.  (We put our dogs in the car and drove to the Outer Banks.)  I found the poem, and I am going to share it here in this post.  Because, after reading it, I fell in love.  With Pete, with poetry, with metaphor, and yes, with anniversaries.  Happy Anniversary, Pete.  I am still in love with you.

Pine Island Wedding

We toasted champagne the color of onions,

cooling our nerves in the back seat while

your brother sailed the macadam blade

that sliced black dirt like hunger.

The day was nervous but clean. Already

our vows hung like cumulus bulbs

in blue memory. The onion fields lay fertile.

I think we were laughing, recalling

our trembling voices, when the distant

face of a migrant worker framed itself

in my fleeting window and centered there

forever. The American Dream gives birth

to backache and pride, sucks

life into its dark belly

where layers of skin encase the heart.

We slice it into wafers,

serve it with prime rib and red wine

while some leatherskinned bracero

releases his sperm into another night

of resignation. We will have children

with skin as silky white as the membrane

between the layers. We will peel

their tender skin each summer by the pool,

keep them sweet in sunlight.

We'll give them anniversaries of taffeta

and cotton lace, feed them lilies

and yellow champagne. You can tell them

stories of Polish immigrants,

of the Pine Island marshes now earthy

and black. Tell them how cheap

labor is, how white is the color

of hope. Today, my sorrow

is as rusty as the most brittle

layer, the one easily shed

before the knife's inquiring blade.

Tonight, you'll peel

this ribbon of ivory satin

from my waist. Sweet,

the conjugal bed. Love reserves

a lifetime for hearts to bleed.