We were all gathering last weekend for Rudder's grandparents' 65th wedding anniversary in Sacramento - all of the children and grandchildren, and assorted spouses. (Unfortunately, the one set of great-grandkids and their mother couldn't come. They had good and sufficient reason, but I was hoping to see them. And their father forgot to bring pictures.)
My poor mother-in-law did not have a great weekend. First, on the drive down from Oregon, the plastic lining the right front tire area came loose There wasn't a dealer near, so they ended up taking it off and fixing the loose ends with duct tape. After driving a 1966 truck into extreme geriatric old age, they had decided to treat themselves when purchasing this latest car a couple years ago, which made this sting a little more; as the MIL said, you don't really want to be driving your BMW with duct tape holding it together. Next, on the way to the airport to pick us up, the two of them both missed seeing a stop sign and got pulled over. They didn't get ticketed at least, and it gave them a story to tell all weekend (ou know how parental types are, with the repeated stories. We went to see the grandparents, picked up Rudder's brother from the airport, then she and I lolled around the hotel pool, in the course of which the pool light came out in her hands. We did get it to stay in place, eventually, and I was hoping this string of little misfortunes was just going to add a little color to the weekend. Unfortunately, things blew up after that
Saturday night, we all gathered at the local aunt's house for dinner. Everyone ate the same things, so we don't know if it was something else she'd eaten or a bug, but the MIL woke up at 5AM to throw up. She stayed in bed all day, but it didn't help - there was a period in the afternoon when she couldn't even keep water down. And she wasn't able to make it that night to he formal dinner celebrating her parents' anniversary.
We had a good time otherwise, but my heart's still a little broken for her. Sixty-fifth anniversaries don't come around often, and they'd decided to get everyone together because her mother's short term memory has gotten very bad; soon she won't be able to share in a conversation at all. (Right now she mostly can't; but every once in a while an old memory will get through or she'll respond to flattery.) So we took any many photos as we could (so did everyone; we have pictures of people taking pictures because it was a true representation of our weekend) and we tried to remember all the stories we cold to tell them to her. But it's not the same.
Rudder and I got home yesterday, our twelfth anniversary, by around 1:00. Much as I love fireworks it's just too blasted hot to be outdoors for long even at night, but I did want to do something celebratory. We went to see Mr. and Mrs. Smith, which I highly recommend as an anniversary movie. It reminds me of True Lies, but this time the wife gets to kick ass too. It wasn't exactly profound, but clever and witty and some parts of the marriage rang true to life for us. Afterwards we had an early, relatively fancy dinner, consumed most of a bottle of wine, and engaged in other celebratory activities. Rudder passed out (not literally) very early, but fortunately woke up again before I was ready to go to sleep, so I didn't end up feeling abandoned.
He had to work today, but I have the day off, which has been handy. Every holiday should be followed by an extra day for getting chores and errands done!
Posted by dichroic at July 5, 2005 06:42 PMHappy Anniversary all around! ~LA
Posted by: LA at July 5, 2005 07:54 PM
Sounds like a real laid back time of pleasure.
Happy Anniversary.