Imbolc Hare Moon
Nicollet Island Inn tonight for our 24th anniversary dinner.
Marriage is an interesting institution and not an obvious one. There is certainly no need 
for marriage as a means of assuring reproduction. There is ample evidence that monogamy grinds against some people all of the time and most people some of the time. The notion of finding someone in your twenties with whom you will be compatible in your sixties is almost laughably difficult. Of course, that problem can be solved. First, a divorce. Second, capitulation. Third, growing along with each other.
I’ve done the first, would find the second constitutionally impossible and now, thankfully, have ample evidence that the third is an option, too. Even marrying in our forties, as Kate and I did, doesn’t necessarily augur well for life together in old age. Why not? Well, forty somethings getting married are still in their working years, burdened and shaped by the demands of occupation and vocation.
After the work life recedes, there’s no guarantee that the two will still want to see each other across the breakfast and lunch and dinner table.
Kate and I have made this transition over the last couple of years, integrating our lives in a 
more closely choreographed dance. Now, when I work here in my study, her sewing machine whirs above me, her feet move across the floor from table to ironing board as she works on her current project. When we look at travel opportunities, we can be much more flexible in our decisions. As the growing season unfolds, so will another year of mutual garden work, growing food, caring for the bees.
We didn’t know we’d be good at this when we got married. It wasn’t on our minds. But that third option, the growing together one? It’s marked every step along the pilgrimage of our life together, a pilgrimage far from finished.
