All Those Years Ago

I discovered that two of my blog friends celebrated wedding anniversaries yesterday and both wrote sweet post about these events (here and here) on their respective blogs. This got me thinking, I also celebrated a wedding anniversary this month. My husband and I reached our nineteen wedding anniversary on the twentieth amidst the chaos of travel and emotional upheaval that was our live at the time.

I woke up that morning reaching for my laptop and once it started sat staring at the calendar application on my desktop thinking why does this date seem important? Then it hit me. "Oh, my," I said, "it's our birthday!"

No, it was our anniversary but at the same time my Freudian slip was true. It was was our birthday- the day we got married was the day we went from me and you to being us in the eyes of the world.

My husband got up earlier to run the dog and walked back into the bedroom while I was still on the computer. When I asked him if he knew what day it was he got a blank look on his face and then asked if it was our anniversary. When I said yes he apologized for forgetting it but I told him not to worry about it since I too had forgotten and considering what had been going on in our lives we were doing well just remembering that it was a Monday. He asked if their was anything special that I wanted to do for our anniversary. I said that since we had already planned to take the brewer tour at the Budweiser plant we should do that. It was something he had been looking forward to and I could see no reason to change our plans.

The best part of the tour was seeing the Clydesdales. The Fort Collins brewery is one of Budweiser's Clydesdale training facilities and we got there while the six two-year-old horses were out in the pasture for one of their two daily play times. As our tour group walked up to the fence between the walkway and the field where the horses were frolicking our guide told us to be careful since the horses were known to bite people. That information kept everyone a safe distance from the fence. Well, all except my husband. He walked right up to one of the horses and held his left palm out flat for the horse to sniff. Then he reached up high to stroke the horse's muzzle. That caused the other tour members to rush forward so that they too could pet the horse but their quick movements caused the horse to jerk its head up and then turn and bolt. My husband was both amazed by the size of the horse and impressed by how quickly it had turned and run since he understood just how much energy it took to move so much weight and mass that quickly. He also could not resist pointing out the fact that he was the only one who got to touch one of the horses. I think doing so was the highlight of the tour for him.

The funny thing about that day is that it turned out to be one of our best anniversaries ever.