On A Bed Of Silver

Jack and I have decided to spread out our anniversary celebrations over two days, the 18th and the 19th of each October. We were married on the 18th, but we had originally chosen the 19th for sentimental reasons: I was nineteen when we met, he was nineteen when we married. Since the 19th meant that much to us and represented the first dawn-to-dusk day of our marriage, we decided to add it to the calendar. This past month we had our first celebration.

The suggested modern gift list created by librarians at Chicago Public Library has a clock as the first anniversary present. A more traditional list has paper; lists of flowers and gemstones have carnations and mother of pearl. I particularly liked the gift of a clock: it represents the time that has passed and the time yet to come. We don't have a house yet, so we're holding off on the purchase of a clock. I would like an old-fashioned one; there's a Terry Pratchett quote that goes, she kept it for its tick. I appreciate the tick.

In the meantime, we had some lovely gifts from our family. Jack's mother gave us a pair of glasses with blue-eyed dragons wrapped around the stems that her mother had given her when she was married. My grandmother found my wedding ring that I had lost (I know! I know) in Massachusetts, and sent it to me. So many people wished us well. It was magical.

When Jack and I were married, we had originally meant to send out invitations the old-fashioned way. As we decided just to invite close family, we were assured that we needed no invitations: word of mouth would suffice for our little group. So we had 30 empty cards and envelopes sitting around our room. We decided that we would mark each one with an anniversary, from our first to our thirtieth, and have the wedding guests write messages in each one. Then on each anniversary we would open the designated envelope and read the message.

This year's message was from my younger brother and his girlfriend.

"Sleep on a bed of silver and dream of gold."

Godspeed to you brave souls!

Godspeed to us indeed.

#marriage