Today is the seventh of June. After twenty seven years, Anita and I still celebrated the monthly anniversary of our wedding. For all you folks who were there, here’s to you!
Its a tradition that goes back to the very beginning. Say what you want about us Catholics, we know how to do marriage. One of the things they made us do was go to a couple of sessions of what is called “Pre-Cana.” Basically it is kind of like a marriage how-to class. The name comes from the wedding feast at Cana, where as I like to point out, Jesus’ first miracle involved getting the party going, producing wine at the nagging of his mother.
We got lucky, I guess, and the couple who taught our class kind of had it together. And one of the things they suggested just stuck with us: for the first year of your marriage, huddle up on your monthly anniversary and take a check up. The guy said, “Think of it like a performance review at work.” That’s exactly what the way he put it. Ask questions like “how are we doing?” “what’s bugging you?” “what’s right, what’s wrong?” and don’t overlook the opportunity to compliment one another. Then right on cue his wife said, “great job in the sack last night, honey!”
Of course, that got a laugh, but it really turned out to be a great thing. I wish I could contact that couple, and let them know that we were still thinking of them, so many years later. So we did that, forgetting as often as not, but when we remembered, it was date night for sure, at least until the kids came, and then that’s where Friday date night originated — its just so much easier to get a sitter on Friday.
So when we remembered, the seventh of any month was a day to mark. Seven’s a good number. I recommend it. Often in latter years we’d forget, but sometimes we’d try to score points by being the one to remember, first thing in the morning or at some point during the day, and send the other one a text or whatever. It was a little goofy, I admit, but it was nice. And you know, having that special time, that opportunity to say something that maybe you didn’t know how to bring up, at first it was a real safety valve, then it became an opportunity for improvement for both of us, then we really tuned and tweaked the thing, and finally it became a comforting habit. You’d be surprised how we used it, and it worked.
But the 11:11 thing just came out of nowhere. Somewhere here in my journals, way back, like ten years or more, I have the comment that I can’t tell you how often I look up, and there’s a digital clock reading exactly 11:11, sometimes morning, sometimes night, sometimes the clock is just wrong. It happened so often that it just seemed kind of weird. So I mentioned it to Anita, and she started noticing it too. Then it became a wishing opportunity. I can’t tell you how or why, it just did. So we would make a pinky-wish whenever we noticed it. Of course, lately it was always the same wish. She never told me hers. Guess I’ll never know it now.
She even did it with her kids, for that one month she was teaching at Ace Academy. Ms. Lowe’s Leopards. First graders. She was so jazzed to get that job. And now this.
But anyway, she would come home and tell me how she taught them all to make pinky-wishes whenever they noticed that it was 11:11.
Turns out, when she passed away, it was the 11th of April, 2011. Guess what time it was.