If you are observing Easter Sunday today, best wishes and all the happiness of the holiday. Like me, I'm sure you have difficulty explaining the relationship of chocolate, a bunny and the Resurrection of Christ (unless you just choose to overlook all of it). We may not be pulling on the same oar, but we're both in that boat. I think if we put our backs into it, we can still reach shore.
Actually, and I reckon time in this instance by the day, Easter Sunday, rather than the date on the calendar, today thirty-nine years ago I asked the woman I was seeing, Sigrid Schubert, to marry me. More importantly for the history books, is that today is when she said yes.
Sigrid told me later she had at first thought I was getting ready to break up with her; sounds like a great argument to NEVER play poker for money with me, except I tend to have all the emotional range of Rainman in a coma, so I should be grateful she held on and waited for the ride to get to....
...Here.
Where she and I are now is, in some respects, not all that far from where we started. The material conditions have changed. We had a two room cold-water walk-up flat off a bus line in Offenbach am Main a 'small' German city with more people in it than who lived in ALL of New London County, Connecticut when we arrived here in the fall of 1991. Our home today is across from the landmark park in the city of Norwich, an industrial revolution meets the American Revolution town found so often in New England. That we were here isn't/wasn't part of either of our visions of our future proving again, life is what happens when you're busy making other plans.
Our wedding rings have both the date of our engagement (technically, that anniversary is next Sunday) as well as of our wedding. I only very rarely take my ring off and actually cannot recall the last time (I just did it to make sure I still can and I can)-and I mention that because I don't especially like jewelry and spend all day putting on and taking off my wristwatch. The ring is a constant, not that I need the reminder.
We were, with apologies to Erich Fromm, a coalition of two against the world from the beginning. I'm not comfortable with new people, taking forever to warm up to them, with the exception of the two who joined our lives, our children. We were three and then became four and then three again and soon enough we'll be back to just the two of us, where we started and I am with the person in the world with whom I am most comfortable.
Sigrid is, for me, like breathing out and breathing in, though I fear I have given her moments where the judicial application of a pillow to my sleeping face has crossed her mind, and so much for the breathing. And that's fair-actually more than fair. This is a day I usually spend looking at where we've been and where I hope we're going but today, I'm thinking more of enjoying just where we are and what we have, which is, one another. She can brighten any room and always brightens my world.
-bill kenny
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