Friday was our 5 year anniversary. Jason’s already commented on the occasion, and his was even on the “big day”, but I needed a few days to catch up and ruminate.

My folks never seemed to do much about their anniversary, so I guess I never grew up expecting the day to be something special. I think Dad might have gotten Mom a card and sometimes some flowers, but for all I saw, that was about it. Since Jason and I have been married, though, we’ve never let it pass without having some special moment to mark the event. This year we went out to breakfast before work (OK, really we delayed work to go eat French toast together), and then made plans for next weekend, since my work deadlines in particular made celebration on “the day” problematic.

I think that we ended up moving the big celebration around seems to suit us and our marriage style even better than a big run-up to the specific date on which we got married. Yes, we got married on July 11 in 1998, and that’s something worth celebrating. But that we’re also married on July 12, 13, 14, 15… is just as worthy of celebration. That we love each other, and work to keep that love strong, on every day of the year seems to be a better statement of our “us-ness” than the plans we make to mark that one day of the year.

It was fun to think about 5 years ago, though – how our wedding day played out, the fun we had at our wedding, the trip to the self-service carwash to try to wash the toothpaste off our car (when we sold the car earlier this year, it still said Jason + Tina on its hood, if you glanced at the paint job just right. Flouride apparently interacts with ClearCoat), the special dinner, our first night in our new apartment… [and we’ll leave the memories right there, folks…]. That day was a wonderful day, and a wonderful way to start our marriage. But as a day in a marriage, it doesn’t measure up to the times when you actually go through things together, when you look past your individual needs or wants to work through something as a couple, when you face something you fear and the experience makes you realize that your partner is even better than you ever realized at being the person you want to spend the rest of your life with. Those probably ought to be added to the calendar to be celebrated, too- and hey, I’d get a lot more beautiful roses and hand-crafted poems that way!