Day 201: Happy Anniversary to Us

It finally arrived: the tenth anniversary of the day of our marriage, to be celebrated pandemic-style. We started the morning off taking the kids to the school for their flu shots. How romantic!

William decided we needed to make chocolate cake and have a ceremony, which he would preside over. So after a couple hours of work, he and I tackled a fun recipe to make individual cakes in ramekins cooked in the Instant Pot. It involved beating eggs and sugar for five minutes, melting chocolate and butter, and finally folding it all together with a mere one tablespoon of flour. The mixture filled four ramekins perfectly, which nestled into the Instant Pot just so, and we slow-cooked them to fluffy perfection. Sprinkled with a little powdered sugar, these things looked like something you'd pay $7 for at a fancy restaurant. 

For the "ceremony" William had Jeremy and me stand opposite each other, and Taiya videoed it. William said very quietly to me, "you can kiss him," and to Jeremy, "you can kiss her," and we kissed, and that was it. We were anniversaried. Then we ate cake on the porch. It was heavenly. Warm, soft, light-textured but richly-flavored. I had to force myself to eat it slowly so I could enjoy every morsel of flavor. 

William "anniversarying" us.

For our anniversary dinner we had chicken noodle soup. It was belly-warming comfort food at its best. After dinner we watched the second episode of the Great British Baking Show (biscuit week!). 

Oh! I almost forgot to break the suspense and tell you what I got Jeremy as a present! Well, as you may have picked up by now, he's a big fan of axes. I found a guy on Etsy who makes beautiful pendants of ax heads, and so I got Jeremy a hand-forged ax-head necklace. And because on weddings both people get a ring, I figured on an anniversary both of us should get necklaces. So I got myself a little silver oak leaf pendant. Oak for strength, and because it's the predominant tree of our woods. I kind of like that the tree and the ax are both represented. Not that Jeremy cuts me down (we wouldn't have made it to the alter if he was that kind of person) but just because they sort of represent both sides of the processes of life. And Jeremy and I complement each other in a balanced sort of way. I think we take turns in our roles, but you need both life and death, growth and decay, building up and breaking down, to form a complete circle. Change, movement, evolution. So now around our necks we carry reminders of this circle. May our marriage keep adding growth-rings each year like the strong tree it has started out to be. 

The magical thing about Jeremy's present, though, was that the man who made it has the initials JN, and so on the back there was a JN stamp, which are our initials! Isn't that kind of amazing? It didn't show that in the picture when I bought it. I only saw it when it came in the mail and I took it out to inspect it. It felt like the universe sending us a big old "YES!"