The summer after my sophomore year in college, I followed the man I’d met and fallen in love with ten weeks earlier to Bakersfield. We were talking at the park and found ourselves planning a fun 50th anniversary celebration.
Only then did it occur to us that we were going to get married, because we would not know when to hold this wonderful celebration if we didn’t. Eleven and a half months later, at the Longfellow House in Cambridge (the one in Massachusetts), we did just that.
Now we had a date for our 50th anniversary celebration with friends, family, and their grandchildren at an amusement park. We thought it would be wonderful if we were somehow wealthy enough by then to rent out the entire park. Or at least to pay for all of our guests to join us.
Today would have been that 50th anniversary.
Back then, I did not picture getting into the Scrambler or its kin with osteoporosis or the tea cups or a Wild Mouse with an inner ear disorder. And I did not picture needing to find an amusement park menu that is low in sodium. I pictured the two of us doing what we found a lot of fun at the time. It’s still fun to think about.
I wonder if we perhaps we should have planned more often for distant future events, unencumbered by the limitations of the day but fueled by whatever brought us both joy in life. Hmm. Another idea to try in my second and already much longer marriage. Care to join us?
