#MicroblogMondays: 30

Our wedding cake. It was actually made of Styrofoam and rented (!)
although I bought the topper as a keepsake (and still have it).
We did make, wrap & hand out pieces of traditional fruitcake to our guests.
This past Christmas, my dad found a bag full of pieces in the freezer!
We'd saved some for the christening of our first baby.
(You all know how THAT worked out...)
(I told Dad to throw it out -- but I did get a photo first, lol.)   

(This is probably too long to qualify as a true "microblog" post -- but hey, it's Monday!)  ;) 

Back in the 1960s, when the first wave of Baby Boomers were in their teens and 20s (and 30 seemed a LONG way off, lol), a popular catchphrase was "Never trust anyone over 30."  Back then, the generation gap was such that 30 seemed positively ancient.

Well, today my marriage officially turns 30 years old. And while part of me thinks that it seems like just yesterday, I have to admit that 30 years is a long, LONG time. Case in point: there was a feature on the news this week marking 30 years (on July 1st) since cellphone service was introduced to Canada -- complete with photos of politicians brandishing portable phones as big as bricks (although it was another 10 years or so before dh & I actually owned one).

Our wedding & honeymoon week coincided with both Wimbledon (we always know it's our anniversary when Wimbledon news starts to dominate the sports pages) and the LiveAid concerts in both London and Philadelphia that raised money for African famine relief.  (Some things, sadly, have not changed enough.) 

We had a lot of dreams and plans for our life together back then.  Some have worked out, some haven't (most notably, of course, our assumption that we would have a family -- someday, if not right away). And there have been some unexpected twists and turns along the way.

Heck, a lot has changed just since our 29th anniversary last July. Dh had already lost his job back in April 2013;  by mid/late July, I was out of work too, thrust into early retirement a few years earlier than either of us had ever imagined. (Nothing quite like retirement to make you realize your age and the passage of time...!) 

I'll admit this past year hasn't always been easy. We already spent a LOT of time together -- more than most couples we know -- but during the work day, we went our separate ways and did our own thing(s). These days, we are together almost 24-7.  No matter how much you love each other, having your own time and space is important, and we're still working on finding that balance. We're slowly getting the hang of this retirement thing and figuring out what we'd like the next few decades to look like.

A 30-year anniversary may not have quite the Hallmark cachet of 25, 40 or 50, but it's definitely a milestone worth celebrating!  Since it's prime tourist season ( = $$$ -- not to mention hordes of people everywhere)(as I've said before to friends, whose idea was it to get married the first week of July, with both Canadian & American tourists marking national holidays -- not to mention the end of school -- and running amok across the continent??), we decided to forego a big trip for now, but might still do something special later this year, or perhaps next winter, when we'll probably be in dire need of a getaway. ;) 

That said, we're not letting the occasion go by completely unmarked. ;)  I'll let you know how we celebrated later.

Many years ago, journalists would write " --30-- " at the end of their stories to signal, well, the end -- that the story was over -- and the copy boys watching the teletype machines would know to rip off the story at that point & deliver it to the editor's desk. This is what I was taught in journalism school, 30+ years ago.  I am not sure whether the practice survived many years after that.

In this case, though, it feels like 30 is only the beginning -- the beginning of a new phase of our life together, and just the preamble to at least 30 more. :)

Happy anniversary, dh.  :)

29 (2014) -- no post (??)
28 (2013)
27 (2012)
26 (2011)
My wedding
25 years (2010)
24 years (2009)
23 years (2008)

You can find more of this week's #MicroblogMondays posts here.