Twenty years on

We have celebrated, and weathered, Manford and my 20th wedding anniversary this week. The last month or two have been hard, I suppose the reality of loss setting in and work no longer working as a way to get away, so I approached the anniversary worried, and with a bad cold. Most of our big days are spread across two days here, now, since the date comes first here, then in the US, and we are not sure which is the real anniversary. So on the 26th, here, I had lunch with a friend who brought beautiful flowers, and had a massage, and at home with the kids we lit a candle after dinner and looked at wedding and honeymoon pictures (which Emily loves to do). We remembered many friends and family that way, some of whom are gone, some changed a lot, some changed very little. Then on the 27th, I had six friends over and we opened the bottle of wine Manford and I brought back from St. Victor la Coste, where we spent much of our honeymoon. The wine was a bit harsh, but the company was good, and we toasted Manford.

This time of year is the most confusing for me here; I don’t know if that is worse this year or if it is just the juxtaposition of it being May, but so clearly autumnal, that I can never figure out what the date is, and feel very disoriented. Here they would say “disorientated,” but I can’t bring myself to do that. It is a beautiful sunny day at the moment, but there are big grey clouds hanging about and it could change rapidly. We have some amazing varieties of fungal life growing in the garden, the most spectacular of which is called a basket or lattice fungus, apparently, and it looks like something man-made. First there is a small roundish brown egglike thing in the grass, and then out pops a white structure like a latticework ball, about as big as a softball. A few days later, it collapses and stinks. Apparently it is part of the “stinkhorn” family, but it is definitely not hornlike.

At Easter, we went on a trip to Wellington and then on to Nelson, at the top of the South Island. All three of us went to Wellington, and ate good food and explored for a couple of days before Joseph went up to Young Friends Camp at Whanganui, and Emily and I went on the ferry to the South Island. We drove to Nelson, and spent four days there. It was a bit rainy, but on Good Friday (which is a holiday there, along with Easter Monday) it was not yet rainy and we got to go sea kayaking and got very close to a dozen or so seals. I also learned to try to steer with my feet (the double sea kayak has a rudder controlled by foot pedals) and coordinate paddling with Emily, which was challenging because she has learned to kayak in smaller single kayaks where she steers by paddling strategically or chaotically, depending on her whim. At least she has gotten over her previous habit of dropping the paddle every ten minutes.

We had a good time, but punctuated by the realization that everywhere in New Zealand (and the rest of the world) is either somewhere I went with Manford, or somewhere I didn’t go with Manford. Maybe we need to work on taking him with us, still. Happy Anniversary, my love, and everyone else who remembers it.