Over the rainbow

Published on Sunday, May 31, 2009 in Leave a litte room for romance. 21 Comments

2009 … There was fresh cod at the market, so I cooked it up with lemon and capers and rice pilaf and we ate at the big table and talked about Mare’s first piano recital and how Renny wants to take Chinese lessons. The late spring night turned gray and a warm rain spatted down into the garden green. Nursing Eden after supper, I glanced out the window and saw a rainbow, and the five of us poured out of the house into the mist and Cute Husband kissed me while the girls ooh’d and ahh’d at the vividness of the colors in the slate gray sky. Moonlight the Cat followed the girls, as he always does, and he stood looking at the rainbow, too, even though he had no idea why.

2008 … We spent the night in Providence, drank champagne and played air hockey at Dave and Buster’s.

2007 … Ducky had died just four weeks prior and I couldn’t stand it. Cute Husband brought me flowers and kissed me quietly and we left it at that.

2006 … Cute Husband was back from Holland and everyone was in town for his law school graduation. We ate pizza in the living room at The House and reveled in calling him “counselor.”

2005 … I was pregnant with Ren. We left Mare with a sitter and went to dinner and he bought me turquoise sandals and we looked at diamonds and pretended we could afford them. Four days later they found the lead dust in The House.

2004 … Mary’s first ever overnight without us. She stayed with Aunt Emily and we went to the Red Lion Inn in Lenox. Emily let us take the Miata. We ate appetizers and listened to a local band at the bar and drove around the countryside with the top down.

2003 … Mary was six months old. We left her with our friends at the Coffee Shop in Beaufort and went off alone together for the first time since her birth. We played mini-golf and drank horrible rum drinks on the beach. With our last pennies, we bought a hot dog for dinner.

2002 … I was pregnant with Mare. Cute Husband came back from a mini-deployment just in time for us to eat steaks at Beaufort Grocery.

2001 … The steaks at Beaufort Grocery tradition began.

2000 … At the Bachelor Officer’s Quarters in Norfolk, Virginia. I left work in Washington, drove three hours in the convertible. When I got there, he had Our Song playing on the laptop, votive candles flickering throughout the room. Horrible pina coladas in cheap flowered glasses from the PX. And Uncle Ben’s rice bowls in the microwave. The room smelled like beach cottage and camouflage paint.

1999 … We cashed in the coupon for a free “top tier” replica of our wedding cake — chocolate covered in marzipan with fresh flowers. We ate it out of the box with two forks, on the East Lawn of the Capitol under a cloudless blue sky. The Marine Band was giving a concert, and just as Cute Husband went to kiss me, they struck up, “The Marine Hymn.”

“Sorry, hon,” he said, getting to his feet and standing at attention.

1998 … The sun has set. We clasp hands and walk down to the flowered arch under which we were married a few hours ago. The photographer follows us. I lift my dress carefully — it was Ducky’s mother’s — and we stand under the arch still as we can while the photographer adjusts the camera. This is the shot we wanted, silhouetted against the stars and the flowers and the night, all filmy lace and quietness and dreams.

“I hope it’s not the best day of our lives,” I whisper.

“What?” he asks. He was always the romantic of the two of us.

“I hope it gets better. I hope eleven years from now, we wouldn’t trade where we are for where we were.”

“Eleven? Why eleven? Why not, like, ten or fifteen?”

“Because it’s more than ten. And it’s not quite fifteen –when we’ll be really old.”

“Stand still, you two, if you want this shot to come out.”

We stand still, but the shot never really does come out, or maybe it did, I don’t know, the photograph is in a box somewhere. Best days and worst days mingle along the ribbon of time that brought us here — each in its time and space, and each gone forever in its turn.

And I wouldn’t trade now for then.

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