2015.11.22 We are a Good Fit

The 29th anniversary of our marriage, the second for each of us, will be tomorrow. That's according to our lovely "Animal Babies" calendar from WWF (World Wildlife Fund). According to the liturgical calendar, however, our anniversary is today, the Sunday the Church designates, Feast of Christ in Majesty, aka Christ the King.

When we chose the royal date, I immediately resisted its utterly exclusive masculine kingliness. We negotiated, as we do, with much spatting and grinning. In the end we agreed that Christ was utterly beyond gender, that we certainly couldn't even imagine a feminine option like Christ the Queen, and finally, that we would NOT sing the traditional hymn suggested for that Sunday, the Diademata, aka "Crown Him With Many Crowns."

So today marks the liturgical anniversary of our first whole day of being married—wedded bliss they call it. Such a love remains blissful and vivacious when you let those invigorating spats happen easily—with humor and the diplomacy of true compromise.

Love, as you age in a marriage over years often grows as comfortable and comforting as, yes, a favorite old bathrobe. (His is green. Mine is blue and white, strewn with pink roses.)

This poem kind of says it all. 

THE BLUE ROBE
by Wendell Berry

How joyful to be together, alone
  
as when we first were joined

  in our little house by the river

long ago, except that now we know

  each other, as we did not then;

and now instead of two stories fumbling

  to meet, we belong to one story

that the two, joining, made. And now

we touch each other with the tenderness

  of mortals, who know themselves:

  how joyful to feel the heart quake

  at the sight of a grandmother,

old friend in the morning light,

    beautiful in her blue robe!

I love you, old friend. Happy Anniversary.