Making up for missing our tenth anniversary last year may seem like a good moment for going all out and throwing down the party gauntlet, especially after a year of staying home, but it felt better to keep things quiet and intimate, the way our marriage has grown and evolved over the years. That made this anniversary weekend somehow more special – it was as much a return as it was a new beginning – the same way we are all navigating this new world.
Boston had evolved and grown as well – the European flavor of open-air cafes beside restaurants that would have never considered outdoor dining options before was its most apparent update – and as scary as change can sometimes be, this felt right.
Uniting the blooms of upstate NY home with our home in Boston, these lilacs bridged New York and Massachusetts, proving that home was wherever you brought your loved ones, and sometimes it was wherever you found simple beauty.
And now the purple dusk of twilight time
Steals across the meadows of my heart
High up in the sky the little stars climb
Always reminding me that we’re apart
You wander down the lane and far away
Leaving me a song that will not die
Love is now the stardust of yesterday
The music of the years gone by
Eleven years into our marriage – and almost twenty one into our relationship – the memories and the history we share emboldens us to keep going, and helps us to survive such trying time we have all had of late. Winnie-the-Pooh said it’s so much friendlier with two, and on magical weekends like this it rings absolutely true.
Sometimes I wonder, I spend
The lonely nights
Dreaming of a song
The melody
Haunts my reverie
And I am once again with you
When our love was new
And each kiss an inspiration
But that was long ago
And now my consolation
Is in the stardust of a song
For our last dinner of the trip, I wear ‘Straight to Heaven by Kilian‘ and we order a car that will bring us to one of Andy’s favorite restaurants, Boston Chops.
There we have a delectable steak dinner to cap off a weekend of good eats, good memories, and good times with my husband.
As we head home and retire for the evening, the rain arrives. It has held off until the midnight hour – for which we are completely grateful – and now forms a cozy reminder of the rain that arrived on the day we departed Boston eleven years ago. We hear it splash onto the windows and the air conditioner, forming a percussive soundtrack to lull us to sleep.
The next morning, in spite of earlier weather reports, the rain is completely gone. There are even peeks at blue sky through the clouds. I pick up some pastries from Cafe Madeleine and bring them back for our breakfast, pausing to look at the flowers along the way, like this snowdrop anemone, which nods its head in the slightest of breezes.
A last look belongs fittingly to the delicate blue blooms of the forget-me-not. Until we return to this beautiful city…
Beside the garden wall
When stars are bright
You are in my arms
The nightingale
Tells his fairytale
Of paradise, where roses grew
Though I dream in vain
In my heart it will remain
My stardust melody
The memory of love’s refrain
