ANNIVERSARY

 It was a special pleasure, yesterday evening, to celebrate our 48th wedding anniversary with a more than usually large number of members of the neighborhood meditation group that I started--I had to check this in my old email records to believe this!--in December five years ago. The theme for our sit: armistice, the cessation of hostilities and the wish for peace.

Ellie and I finally got married, appropriately, on Armistice Day in 1972, and toasted the occasion with our neighbors at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. Yesterday afternoon, thought we no longer live right next door to them--thought we do still live on the same hill--we met with those same old friends for a glass of champagne in their back yard.

I posted a note about this on my Facebook timeline and received more congratulations than I could possibly have expected, some coming from friends with whom we have been out of touch for years; and many coming from close friends and family from whom we have been separated for a mere few months by this cruel pandemic. I have many reservations about Facebook--and indeed about all related social media--but there are benefits, too. I enjoy being able to say my piece, whether personal or in recent days mostly political, and knowing that my words have resonance. I hear back.

To celebrate after our sit with fellow meditators who have now become our friends--and in view of the dining restrictions imposed on us by the pandemic--we called out to order a pizza and a beetroot and cucumber salad. Which we enjoyed quietly at home with a glass of wine, under the watchful, envious gaze of Jake, the dog, who is not allowed to share our pizza--though he does think he deserves it. So it was, yes, a happy anniversary. Only two more, with luck, to fifty!