Anniversaries and Tulip Bulbs
Twenty-eight years ago on November 19, 1993, Patrick and I stood before 125 of our dearest family and friends, promising to take care of each other with a deep abiding love that would have no expiration date.
On November 28, 2021, we’re still here, unexpired and in love and working on the next twenty-eight years.
In the past week, most of my sentences have started with “honey, on this day twenty-eight years ago, we were…” as I plucked stories from the days leading up to our wedding, the ceremony itself and the two-week honeymoon that followed. This year, our anniversary fell precisely on the day of the week we were married, an alignment that made it easy for me to take the long view over my shoulder and pull those memories forward. I’m probably driving him mad doing this, but if he’s annoyed, he’s keeping it to himself (evidence of the “abiding” part, with a healthy measure of patient tolerance, bless him). The other night, a memory surfaced for both of us.
Twenty-eight years ago on our honeymoon, on Thanksgiving Day, we were serving dinner at a soup kitchen in Flagstaff, Arizona when Patrick saved a little boy from choking to death on a chunk of turkey. One moment we were sitting across from the young lad, all of us digging into our plates laden with traditional holiday fare and then suddenly, Patrick was leaping over the table to perform the Heimlich on a six-year-old (successfully, thank goodness). The little guy’s family rushed over in alarm that soon mixed with gratitude, and as the scene settled down, they gave the child a king-sized Snickers bar to calm him (adrenaline still flowing, Patrick kept an eye on the boy in case there was an encore). Somewhere in the commotion, NBC news was filming on location for their usual Thanksgiving Day segment on good folks helping their neighbors and got the “live-at-5” bonus story every reporter dreams of. We politely declined an interview, preferring to keep our heads humbly down and grateful for time, place and Patrick’s pre-professionally-trained paramedic instincts. The boy’s parents insisted on treating us to dinner at the pizza place they owned and that offer we accepted, enjoying some mighty fine pies the next evening (I don’t think we’ve had better restaurant service since then, truly).
After that, the stories from those first two weeks of our marriage kind of pile on top of each other, and the exact days they took place all those years ago are more elusive, mixed up with other memories and blurry around the edges. It’s ok. The accompanying images and feelings are still vivid and filled with the time-dissolving power that all good reminiscing offers.
In a not-unrelated sort of way, my uncle surprised me this week with an offer of tulip bulbs descended from the ones that his father, my Opa, had grown and tended decades ago in the back yard of the family home in Tiffin, Ohio. They arrived priority mail on Saturday, landing gently on our front porch along with a small cannister of bone meal and a copy of The Complete Book of Bulbs by F. F. Rockwell and Esther C. Grayson (copyright 1945) to guide me in keeping this precious Dutch legacy alive. Like any living thing, they require effort and attentiveness to keep them upright and thriving, and I am definitely showing up for that task. The challenge will be where to plant them, with 41 acres to choose from. Even as my head wraps around the next steps for getting them in the ground as soon as I can, I’m seeing images of the Tiffin house grow sharper and clearer through the child-Liz lens of my mind’s eye, and it makes me feel happy. Those were good times and, fingers crossed, I’ll smile upon the sweet petaled faces of their offspring in a few months, moving the past forward another botanical step.
How did I come by a life so sweetly shaped into stories that dance a rhythmic push-and-pull between what was, what is and what might be? When I take that look back, I see hard-won lessons holding hands with and walking alongside the days of deep contentment, and it feels balanced and right. It has been neither easy nor heartbreaking all of the time and who would want that anyway? This collection of stories, which I add to daily, is both who I am now and a road map for who I want to become. I know I’ll never fully arrive and now my head hurts from the sheer expansiveness of it all, the landscape of Possibility given to each of us. Seems best to keep moving along until I can’t anymore and recognize the present for the gift that it is.
For now, that present is a box of tulip bulbs asking to be given another season and a twenty-eight-year marriage stepping comfortably into whatever the future may hold, one conversation at a time.
