Thursday, September 22, 2005

Long and Winding Road . . .


Four years ago my world was tilted on its axis -- September 11, 2001 had just occurred, George W. Bush was about to steal the presidency out from under good sense and common decency and I got married.

Granted, MT Moon and I had been together for 8 years at that time but it was still nice to look forward to a ‘wedding anniversary’ to celebrate rather than that “we’ve been together how long” milestone we'd been drinking to before then. We definitely set something of a new trend getting married later as it seemed so many of our friends were married with children by then.

But I think we've gotten the best of all worlds. We’ve been together since our mid-twenties, gotten married fairly late in life by modern urban standards, and are in it for the duration, which means even more time together. We've certainly had our ups and downs: four moves in as many years, a miscarriage, an old house, two "high-powered" careers and now we've got this wonderful, beautiful child in our family, who came along at the right time, without some rush to make an addition before the two of us got to know each other (we knew each other just fine when the rush came, thank you). We’ve been together for one-third of our lives and I can't imagine doing anything other than this, and don't especially care to.

In light of MT Moon’s despondency that he couldn’t make the wedding cake (he was certainly more than capable of making it and of doing a damn fine job of it too - I simply lacked the fortitude to withstand the psychosis that would surface were he to take on such a huge task in the midst of planning our wedding) we decided that he would pick out nice wedding bands instead of those crappy ones most guys get as a throw away to the engagement ring. He chose rings made by J. Binion a metalsmith in Oregon who implements a Japanese heat fusing technique called Mokume Gane where a combination of various alloys (in our case, white, yellow and red gold) are forged, carved and finished to produce a uniquely patterned ring. They’re then split in half to create a mirror image of the other. I honestly couldn’t imagine a more perfect symbol of our life together since MT Moon is in fact a mirrored version of me (I mean in spirit, of course, since I'm not 6’2” and male).

The day after our third anniversary -- September 22, 2004, in case you're wondering -- MT Moon and I were at a wedding. Someone with a video camera asked how long we'd been together, and when we told him, he asked what our secret was. I made some stupid wisecrack, which I've regretted ever since. What I should have said is that the secret to a long, happy relationship and marriage is to marry the ideal person. Do that and everything else falls into place.

Happy anniversary, MT Moon. I'd marry you again, especially if I also got to keep the last twelve years.

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