While in Scotland with G’s parents last spring, we posed a question. ‘How would you like to spend your 40th wedding anniversary?’
As a textbook example of how a long love and marriage should be, they’re never ones to celebrate in half measures. For their 35th anniversary, they celebrated throughout the entire year. They traveled with us to Tanzania and drank champagne by rounds during the flight. They had a moonlight dinner on the sand in Zanzibar. And the list goes on and on… So, posing this question for their 40th, we weren’t exactly sure what they’d have in mind, but were certain it would be a fun, yearlong celebration and we wanted to be a part of it.
After taking a bit of time to ponder, they came back to us weeks afterward with an idea. ‘How about Hawaii? Is it too far?’ Though planning for Baby #2 in 2013, we’ve never been ones to shy from a holiday adventure and immediately said ‘yes’ to the 40+ hour round-trip journey without hesitation. And what a great time we had. Thank you, Allan & Virginia, for the prompting and for the lovely pre-baby family time in paradise.
Together, we splashed in keiki pools (natural, protected, shallow kiddie pools along the shore), built castles of sand, watched hula, sampled roasted pig, had family dinners, enjoyed drinks at sunset, listened intently to our toddlers’ serenades and enjoyed a week of serendipitously running into one another around ‘town’ [the cruise ship].
It was a lovely celebration of the life [and lives] they’ve created during their 40 years together. A celebration we were honoured to have a hand in.
Both G and I are fortunate to have parents who are each celebrating their 40th anniversaries this year. And while we’ve been told that the chapter we’re now entering (married with a tantruming toddler and new baby in the house) is one of the most difficult to weather as a married couple, we feel confident all will be ok. Most of this confidence is down to our parents’ example. Thank you for setting a good one to follow…and cheers to many more collective, happy years to come.