41

11/11.  Armistice Day in England.  Poppy Day, in case you've been wondering about those poppies in the lapels of the British folk--especially politicians--you see on television.  It used to be that you'd buy a poppy on Poppy Day in memory of those who died on the poppy fields of Flanders in the first World War.  Now it seems de rigueur for all public figures to wear one for at least two weeks before--to demonstrate their patriotism?  It's a bit like Christmas: we're now already seeing Christmas lights everywhere, weeks before Thanksgiving.  All too soon, we'll be hearing jingles.

Anyway, enough with the curmudgeon.  It's our anniversary, the 41st.  Last year, the 40th, we both forgot all about it, until we received a cell phone call out on the cliff here in Laguna--our daughter calling with congratulations!  We took it to be a good thing, really, that we had forgotten; something so much ingrained that it did not need to be remembered.  But today we did remember.  AND had a call from our daughter as we enjoyed our morning cup of tea in bed.

We tied the knot at city hall, downtown Los Angeles, on the morning of 11/11, and went on with our good friends and neighbors, Shel and Linda, to celebrate with brunch and a champagne toast at 11AM at the historic Biltmore Hotel.  11AM on 11/11, you'll recall, marked the signing of the treaty of Versailles to end World War I.  It seemed like a good moment to make the pact between us, having lived together already for a couple of years.  And Sarah, our daughter, was with us for the occasion.  She was born almost exactly one month later.

This evening we will meet those same good friends for dinner at a local restaurant.  They are no longer exactly our neighbors, but we still live just around the corner from them, on the same hill where we have all lived since 1969.   It will be a joy to celebrate that big, rich chunk of life together with them, 41 years later.

(I'm still unsure what's happening with The Buddha Diaries.  My last entry was two weeks ago--unheard of!  I do have an excuse: I've been dealing not only with jet lag, but bronchitis.  Still, I'm struggling to come to some sense of where to go from here, with my writing.  That novel was a big push.  It says a lot that I've been trying to say for many years, a big dump of stuff that had been hanging around in my writing consciousness, awaiting fulfillment.  Now it's done--bar the rewrites, if some editor makes the commitment to it--I'm left with a kind of vacated feeling, not knowing quite what to do with myself or where to go...)