Public Transportation

The Spouse and I didn't have a honeymoon. We paid for our own wedding and given that I was unemployed for 7 of the 9 months we were engaged and he was in the movie business, we were lucky to manage that. But it was ok. We figured that someday we'd be able to take a big honeymoon trip. Maybe someday we still will.

The Spouse's brother and sister, however, wanted to do something special for us. At our reception they told us to be ready the next afternoon, at some appointed time, with overnight bags packed. That was all they would say.

The next afternoon a big limo pulled up in front of our building and rang for us. The driver greeted us and loaded our bags. He told us that we had an hour to kill before he had to take us to our destination, which he would not disclose. So we drove around the city, dropping in at a bar that was run by friends...mostly to show off the limo.

We were taken to the Salish Lodge, which is a beautiful rustic inn 30 miles outside of town. It overlooks the Snoqualmie Falls, in the foothills of the Cascades. The setting could be accurately described as idyllic. The room included the famous Lodge breakfast for the next day. We had scored some cash as wedding presents and used that to order a fabulous dinner from room service, which we ate in front of the fireplace, the soft roar of the Falls for background music. It was perfectly romantic, perfectly soothing after the glorious whirl of 3 days of wedding fetes.

Save for one niggling concern. No one had said anything about our return trip. We knew checkout was a noon. So The Spouse called his brother. "Oh," said Brother. "Yeah. Um, we hadn't thought about that". He volunteered to come pick us up, when he got off work, but we didn't feel like cooling our heels for that long. (If we'd brought hiking clothes it would have been ok but we didn't and that's pretty much all there is to do there). So when we checked out we went across the street from the Lodge and caught a Metro bus back into the city.

And that was when we had a profound insight into the nature of marriage: sometimes you're riding in a limo, sometimes you're riding in the back of a bus; as long as you have each other and a good sense of humor it doesn't really matter how you make the journey.

I thought of that today when I was contemplating our anniversary plans. The Child has choir until 6:30, which pretty much precludes going out to dinner. And really, my beef daube with dumplings is as good as anything we'd get in a restaurant. So our 15th anniversary is going to be spent eating a crockpot stew and then we'll shuffle The Child off to bed, pop open a bottle of Veuve Cliquot and watch the season premiers of "My Name is Earl" and "The Office". Because sometimes our anniversary is poetry and sometimes it's prose. It doesn't matter, so long as we're together.

Cheers.