Anticipation Of Our 40th

With the stock market crashing, banks failing, home repairs looming, jobs disappearing, prices increasing, income decreasing—Ginny and I decided to spend money to go on vacation to celebrate our 40^th Anniversary next month.

We consider that a good investment.

We are investing in us.

Can we afford to rent an isolated cabin deep in the far-off woods?

Why not?

If we did not spend cash on us, what would we spend it on?

We’d intended to forego an Anniversary trip this year. We’d be just as happily married without going off anywhere. But this past week we reversed our reasonable decision and made our reservations.

Now we anticipate.

We do this by looking ahead…

And by looking back.

Yesterday we spent about five hours looking at slides of our previous Anniversary trips. My but we had fun! We talked about books we read on our last trips. And about scenery we saw, and animals we watched, and meals we ate, and waters we swam, and churches we visited, and people we talked to, and love we renewed, and jokes we laughed at.

All that was looking back.

But we also looked ahead talking bout roads we’ll travel, places we’ll stop, harvest fields we’ll view, prescriptions we’ll need, things to pack, mail to stop, animals to arrange care for…

It’s like getting ready for Heaven.

Anticipating by looking forward and back.

Back on November 20, 2005, I wrote in my diary about a previous trip and posted some photos; if anybody’s interested that’s in my blog archives at http://www.cowart.info/blog/2005_11_01_rabidfun_archive.html

But that was then; this is now.

Yesterday as I sat at my computer browsing, Ginny sat in her rocker directly behind me. I got interested in a site about cake recipes and began to tell her about them as I clicked here and there to enlarge photos of cakes.

I talked and talked about this site, until I asked her, “Don’t you think so”?

No answer.

I turned around to find her chair empty.

For ten or 15 minutes I’d been talking to myself in an empty room.

I walked back to find her sorting laundry in the bedroom and putting clothes on hangers. “Didn’t you know I was talking to you,” I asked.

“Yes, but I wanted to get this done,” she said.

“Just how do you expect this marriage to last, If you walk away and leave me talking to myself”?

“You are so much easier to love when you’re in another room,” she said.