I thought I might get goals for the year thought about and written down today, because I guess I forgot when my anniversary is. I haven't done goals for the year by January 1 in two decades, first because this was a celebratory day for me and more recently because it's a day for... not mourning, exactly, because I'll be getting round to that soon enough, but more for a solemn gratitude. Some thoughts of what might have been with a thick overlay of thanks for 13 really great years. Would I have liked more years? Obviously. Does that stop me from appreciating what we had? Definitely not.
After Chad and I shared the same couple of wedding pics on our social media year after year for a while, the last couple of years I've taken a few minutes with the photo albums on January 1 to choose pictures that I've not shared before, ones that can invite others in to enjoy the inherent joy of a wedding day. (This year, I missed. I thought I said something quite funny, but the first handful of Facebook reactions were all sad faces.) And as the calendar keeps pulling us farther and farther away from 2002, I get progressively more amazed at how young we were--the more so because in my combination of time, place, and faith community, getting married at age 23 was considered kind of late. Do you know how many relatives said at my wedding that they thought I was never getting married?
Anyway, here we are cutting the cake, which was baked and assembled with care by my ridiculously talented auntie. The first time I saw this setup with the stairs and the fountain at a family wedding, I was blown away, but never thought of having such a thing myself until she and I were talking about my cake and she offered the fountain. I was thunderstruck and said yes so fast I think I might have broken the sound barrier.
Why am I making that face? No idea. Why is Chad hanging on to my arm like that? Also no idea. See the glass of sparkling cider on the lower left? My brother put all the cider bottles in the church fridge two days before the wedding with the labels turned toward the back, so our grandma would assume we had something alcoholic and would freak out without bothering to investigate. And so she did, exactly on cue. It's like she wanted to be upset.
That's the face of a man who will never forgive himself if he messes up the cake. That's our family wedding cake knife he's using, and I have no idea who is going to get it after me, since I have no children to pass it down to. But that's a problem for another day.
Happy 2023, y'all. Hug your loved ones today and enjoy the time you're given for as long as you're given it.
