Time

This past weekend we celebrated the eighth year anniversary of our marriage. We didn't exchange cards until late in the day. I gave mine to her first and then she disappeared into her office and emerged with my card a minute later. When I asked, she said she hadn't wanted to embarrass me with her thoughtfulness in case I had forgotten.

The soft-colored card I gave to her had two children, a girl and a boy, holding hands on a beach and gazing out at the incoming waves. Hers to me: a small Airstream parked on a grassy overlook above the ocean. To its right are two swayback deck chairs under an umbrella; again, facing out to sea.

It's amazing to me the congruity of us picking different renderings of the same theme. The cards seem to represent our past and our future. The constant, abiding and timeless presence, like the ocean, is our love.

We first met in a love fever when we were both forty. She called in sick and we stayed in bed for a week. Our separation two years later was acrimonious. We had nothing to do with each other for almost 15 years until I, haunted my her memory, re-established contact (she had moved to an island a hundred miles away) and we have been virtually inseparable ever since.

When we get back home from revisiting that slow-paced island, it is hot, hotter than it's ever been in this town.