40 Years Together

December 21, 1971
Jan and CB after wedding with
CB's brother Tom looking on

December 21, 2010

Today is CB's and my 39th wedding anniversary! Somehow "39" sounds worse than next year's 40. It is amazing to have been married so long. Tonight at dinner, CB told me that it took us 39 years to get a grandchild! (That doesn't make sense in some ways; it took us that long to have a child who is 31 years old.)

AE and KA flew from Seattle with their cocker spaniel Morgan today. MJ went to Austin to pick them up; they are driving here right now. They should all arrive sometime after 11 pm. YAY! It's too bad it is so warm and humid right now.

The other children, one grandchild, and two dogs will arrive tomorrow. What a full house we will have, and how happy we are!

I am very grateful for my life, family and friends.

May 27, 1969

Were you alive in 1969? What were you doing in 1969?

On May 27, 1969, I left a poem entitled "People" by Yvetushenko on the windshield of CB's '57 Chevy that was parked on a hill going up to Western Washington State College in Bellingham, WA. He later called me and we spent the evening in the "music room" up at the college. After that we started dating regularly, and we got married 2 1/2 years later.

What is rather odd is that we had three dates in the fall of our freshman year in college, but did not like each other too much. I was very shy, and CB later told me that he thought I was acting "cold, disinterested, and superior." There must have been a lot of silence between us, as CB was/is not much of a talker anyway.

Somehow the way was opened on this date for a relationship to form. Maybe the poem helped deny that first impression CB had of me as it begins with the line, "No people are uninteresting."

San Francisco Photos

View of Union Square from our hotel room

Our only San Francisco picture of both of us.
This was taken behind the Ferry Terminal
with the Oakland Bay Bridge in the background

The following pictures are from our long walk along Broadway from Van Ness and eventually to Clement Street

Jan in front of Thidwick Books, which has wonderful cards.

Green Apple Books

LINKS to where we went on our San Francisco trip!

We got home this afternoon from our whirlwind and very busy three days and nights in San Francisco. Although I've downloaded my pictures, I have to rename each one and don't have the time to pick and choose to post any right now. That will be tomorrow.

So I decided to put some of the highlights here:

Getting $11 day passes to ride public transit in San Francisco was one of the best ideas we had. Both Thursday and Friday, we rode cable cars, street cars, and city buses to get to all the places we wanted to visit.

On Thursday morning we ate at the Crepevine Restaurant, which was one of our best meals of all. There are about about four of these restaurants in the SF area, and they are well worth a visit.

Mission Dolores is the oldest intact building in the City of San Francisco and the only intact Mission Chapel in the chain of 21 established under the direction of Father Serra. We walked there from the Crepevine Restaurant and were blessed and amazed by the mission. Its painted interior and ceiling reminded me of the Painted Churches around Schulenberg, TX.
We had lunch at the Ferry Building Marketplace and saw views of the bay and the Oakland Bay Bridge and then took a cable car back to Chinatown, where we had had our first dinner on Wednesday night. In a wonderful tea shop (Red Blossom Tea Company), I bought two different kinds of white tea: Silver Needle and Silver Peony. I am very excited about getting this tea and that I can order from the company online.
First Crush Restaurant was the restaurant we went to on Thursday night, which was a popular place for young people. It was conveniently located to our hotel, as it was only three blocks away. The food was excellent, especially the scallops, and the entire meal was a gourmet feast.

Friday we ate near the hotel again (and I had pumpkin crepes) and then took a cable car up, up the hills to Broadway and walked to Van Ness to start a long walk that ended up next to the edge of The Presidio and Park and the Richmond area. At each intersection along the way, we saw gorgeous views of the bay and glimpses of the Golden Gate Bridge in the fog out there.

I found wonderful cards at a little book store on Clement Street called Thidwick Books, where the talkative owner recommended someplace for lunch and the location of Green Apple Books, which I'd read about on the internet. I'm a "cardophile," if such a thing exists, and bought over 20 cards at that quaint shop. I'd go back if I could frequently for the cards I love to send people.

I had too little time and also was tired from our long walk and so saw very little of Green Apple Books, which winds up and around with books galore. It reminded me of Powell's Books of Portland on a somewhat smaller scale. It is a wonderful place with new and used books. Lots of recommendations and referrals with signs and funny sayings. What a place!
We finally got back to the hotel at 3 o'clock in the afternoon and collapsed on our beds for awhile. But this being our last day in San Francisco, we ventured out to find Gumps because my mother loved this store and ordered gifts for us for our various anniversaries through the ages. (I tried on a pair of jade earrings there and the sales associate commented on how lovely they were with my "blonde" hair--in a less elegant store, I'd have been acknowledged to have "white" hair.) And then we took a cable car to Ghirardelli Square, just to ride a cable car for the last time.

Took a bus back downtown but had to walk and walk again to get to Tadich Grill in the financial district. We'd gone there on Christmas Eve day on our honeymoon. I had a dungeness crab cocktail and broiled halibut, some of my favorite fish. What a great meal to end our SF trip.

Mystery Trip!

As I pondered our May 27 Anniversary Surprise, I wondered and hoped that we might be going to San Francisco, where we went on our honeymoon. AND WE ARE!!

Yesterday CB presented me with two travel books about San Francisco to alert me to our trip's destination. He had kept it a secret for months, and our children also did not tell. We are going on a whirlwind trip there, much like our quick honeymoon before Christmas 1971.

We are even staying in the same hotel--the Saint Francis, which my mother had told me about from her days as a Marine in WWII.
We are leaving early this morning and will be returning on Saturday.

(And please remember to keep Dennis in your prayers.)

May 27 Anniversary Surprise

May 27th is a week from today, and it is the 40th anniversary of when CB and I started dating, which I wrote about last year.

Fran is the reason I started writing about this today. She started blogging on May 27, 2007, which is four days before I started blogging that same year. Today she proclaimed that her two year blogiversary is coming up! She has cute pictures there, too.

Another reason that this is coming to mind is that at today's lectio divina group, I had to tell everyone I would not be here next week. For some time, there has been a thick black line through the days of the calendar from Wednesday to Saturday starting with May 27. Scrawled next to it is "no meetings."

I didn't know what that meant until CB told me that we are going on a surprise trip on May 27. He won't tell me where, but says he will inform me of what to pack that day. So where would we go for four days?

This is very romantic and totally surprising from CB.

So I think May 27 was, is, and will be a good day.

May 27

May 27 is the 39th anniversary of CB and my first "real" date. This is the date we always observe, even though we dated three times in the fall of our freshman year in college. We found each other uninteresting that first dating period.

What brought us together is a poem I left on the windshield of his car. That same evening he called me up and invited me to sit with him in the "music room" at the college. After that, we dated often and even studied together. And 2 1/2 years later we were married.

At the time, this was my favorite poem. Here it is:

People

No people are uninteresting.
Their fate is like the chronicle of planets.

Nothing in them is not particular,
and planet is dissimilar from planet.

And if a man lived in obscurity
making his friends in that obscurity
obscurity is not uninteresting.

To each his world is private,
and in that world one excellent minute.

And in that world one tragic minute.
These are private.

In any man who dies there dies with him
his first snow and kiss and fight.
It goes with him.

There are left books and bridges
and painted canvas and machinery.
Whose fate is to survive.

But what has gone is also not nothing:
by the rule of the game something has gone.
Not people die but worlds die in them.

     -- Yevgeny Yevtushenko