Anniversary post: This year marks 31 together

Amanda and Val: many years ago and today. Man, look how young we were. Sheesh.
Thirty-one years and counting certainly shows. But who in their right mind would care about wrinkles or grey hair
when it is a good and generous love that has propelled us through the years together. 

Every good story is told through both summary and scenes.

Val & Amanda’s story: The summary

A generous love that has withstood the challenges of two bouts of cancer and multiple joint replacements, of job changes and career disappointments, of cats found and cats lost, of parents living and parents dying. Two women, together, building a good life.

Amanda: Three scenes

April 1997: Val and I are driving from Winnipeg down through the Dakotas and Wyoming and Utah to Arizona, camping in a tent along the way and marvelling at what we can do together, still, after Val’s cancer diagnosis earlier that year. At a roadside cafe somewhere in Utah, a woman asks me if we are sisters. Without skipping a beat, I reply that we are sisters of the heart. Ah, said the woman. Whether or not she got it, I don’t know. But I do know that back in the latter years of the previous century, in Utah, that’s as far as I was willing to go. A strong memory.

Me, driving through a snowstorm on New Years Eve 1999, determined to get to our cottage, which we had bought that summer. Val was already there, having stayed after Christmas, but I had had to return to the city for work. Y2K was coming and it was all hands on deck at my employer’s. Fine, but I was definitely returning to the cottage for New Years Eve fun with our friends — food, drink, a bonfire and fireworks. It was cold. The snow was coming down. But I got into the car and got driving. And just kept going. I was determined. And I knew Val was waiting for me. I thought about what I could do — and was doing — not what might happen or what I might otherwise be doing. I was focused and I arrived safely. We all had a great time celebrating the new year in the great out of doors that was so cold the champagne got slushy. A very good memory.

In the early days of refurbishing the front yard at our city home, I wanted to have a retaining wall to contain the main flowerbed. Val said I was well able to do that myself. Really? Yes, really. So I got to work, scoping out the location and building up the soil. Val had the brilliant idea to lay out the shape of the wall using the hose to show the line along which to dig. She laid out the hose, I dug. Go deeper, she said. The foundation has to be deep enough to hold the bricks solid. I didn’t really want to go deeper, by then I was tired. But I knew she was right, so I went deeper and then built up the wall that stands to this day. True, it needed some structural rehab last fall, but the core of what I built years ago still holds up today. That day of the original build is a most satisfying memory.

Val & Amanda: 31 years in summation

When a relationship starts with the idea that this other person might just be the one for you, the opportunity exists for the laying of a foundation that will support whatever the future might bring (including necessary refurbishments along the way). So it has been for me with Val. Driving through snow storms, camping in tents, and digging deep in the garden are no longer my priorities or my preferences. But I continue to choose Val for the boundless possibilities that her love of me and mine of her create for both of us in our life today. We are lucky, indeed.

***

We legally married on August 31, 2013; the year of Val's cancer recurrence. Since then, we mark that day as our anniversary, even though it really all began on the Thanksgiving weekend in 1993. But that is another story altogether... 

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Land acknowledgement: I respectfully recognize that I live on the original lands of Anishinaabe, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota and Dene peoples, and on the homeland of the Métis Nation.

Photo credits: Left-hand photo - likely by our friend Randa; right-hand photo - taken on a recent visit by our friend Regan. Thank you, both.