Free-Floating Anniversary

Yesterday, March 19th, marked five years of Mike's and my coupledom. At least by our reckoning--unlike a wedding anniversary it's not always clear when your coupledom anniversary should fall. It's especially hard for us because we evolved into a couple over time from a couple of friends. I think most people choose a first kiss, but ours was not an auspicious first kiss, and it was followed by six months of me not speaking to Mike unless absolutely necessary i.e. "You're standing on my foot, snotnose." We chose the night of our first "date," which was really just one of many dinners at Tom's. This particular one was different because we had just announced to our friends over the course of four or five days that we were a couple.

I remember some of those announcements quite fondly. I had expected most people to be happy the way an out-of-wedlock child is when its parents get married, but I think everyone was nervous that this new development would end in breaking up the new Carman 11 family we had formed. It took Jeff about ten minutes just to believe Mike wasn't joking. Rich threatened to beat Mike up. I wasn't there personally when Mike's ex-suitemates heard, but apparently Eugene couldn't close his mouth for quite some time, and Trevor is said to have shaken his head, muttering "That girl's got problems." For some reason we were terrified of telling Form, and avoided it for so long that I think Joel actually told him for us, but now neither one of us can remember why.

Mike and I normally celebrate our anniversaries by one of us saying "Hey, wasn't our anniversary last week?" and the other one saying, "Hey, yeah. Cool." But we put on an unusually good show this time by a) remembering it b) not having work all day and c) going out. We would have gone to Tom's if we could, but we just went to Seasons, the somewhat upscale restaurant down the street from us. I had a delicious salad made from endive, goat cheese and three kinds of local beets, followed by wild mushroom risotto and sauteed brussels sprouts. Mike had crab cakes and fetuccine carbonara. We shared a half bottle of Syrah. Then we nipped across the street to the movie theater for a late showing of Be Cool, which was something alright but that something is not a movie.

In the five years since that diner date, Mike and I have weathered nine jobs, seven homes (two of them shared), umpteen business trips, three summers apart, two continents, four time zones, one terrorist attack on our city, two presidential elections (margin of error +/- 1), one cross-country drive with all our belongings in tow, four couches, one purple chair, nineteen shared hotel rooms, two strip club visits (one each), five net new friends, zero unwanted pregnancies, four weddings, one funeral, one blog and one marriage.

Not a bad start.