Milestone Anniversary

A milestone anniversary is coming up. My wife Wendy and I will celebrate number 30 in a couple weeks, May 31 to be exact. I know because the date is engraved on the inside of my wedding band. I imagine there is a particular gift for the 30th year: platinum, china, ebony, rock, paper, scissors . . . I don’t know which. I didn’t buy anything yet.

I did make reservations at a couple resort type hotels as we have a couple days off to travel along Lake Michigan. But the names of the hotels will remain a mystery to the missus until we get there. Even after 30 years, you need a few surprises to spice up the relationship.

For our last milestone anniversary, our 25th, my generous parents paid for us to stay at the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island. No cars allowed there, only horses and bikes. I brought my tennis rackets as they had clay tennis courts, something I always wanted to try. But after hitting the ball a few strokes, Wendy came up lame. She could barely walk let alone continue our tennis game. If she would have been one of the Mackinac Island horses, they would have shot her.

I still remember our first anniversary which included a trip to Toronto. We took the train but after gathering up our luggage at our destination all the cabs had been taken. We hauled our suitcases the several blocks to our hotel. I remember one rush hour driver rolling down his window and calling out, “Welcome to Toronto.” Wendy called back thanks.

One of my memories from that trip was making a reservation at Sir Nicholas, a Polish restaurant on the outskirts there that required a long bus ride. When we arrived and were escorted in, I wasn’t going to divulge that we had reservations lest the place be empty and we be revealed as naïve tourists.

Sure enough, the cavernous dining area had plenty of tables but few diners. Just as I was taking this in, Wendy spoke up, “We have reservations.” I never let her forget that. We could easily have reserved the whole place that night. Thankfully, the host pretended he didn’t hear.

Hea! Just for the heck of it, I Googled Sir Nicholas Restaurant in Toronto just now. Check out this blurb which was part of another restaurant review:
“You have to understand: Roncesvalles has never been a culinary destination. Yes, it's true that the Pope made a pit stop to the long since boarded up Sir Nicholas Restaurant for some Polish/Hungarian cuisine.”

I didn’t know that the Pope dined there. Wonder if he had a reservation.

What adventures will we have on the road this weekend? Of course, we can have adventures at home too. In fact, we had one just last night. I awoke in the middle of the night to scratching sounds. In the darkness, it appeared than an animal was trying to break in through our second story bedroom screen which overlooks the roof of our family room.

I slammed the window shut as it was partially open. This awakened Wendy. I told her there was an animal trying to get in through our window. Now this happened once before but the animal had fled before Wendy had seen it. She was sure the would-be intruder was a figment of either a dream or my imagination.

But this time she saw it. It was a raccoon, she said. Very scary, especially when I showed her how our screen was pushed free of its frame by the masked marsupial (yeah, I know he’s not a marsupial but masked marsupial sounds cool).

So today she told friends and family about the midnight encounter with the raccoon. She e-mailed her sister too, which got forwarded to me as well. But I found the e-mail subject header odd. I would have thought she would have titled her e-mail “Raccoon at our window”, or “Animal almost gets into our bedroom.”

Instead, reminded of my earlier account of the raccoon at our bedroom window, Wendy titled her e-mail, “Dave is not crazy.” *sigh*

After 30 years of marriage, this should be news?