On June 2, 1998, I wore this dress on my first date with the man who would become my husband.

Two weeks shy of twenty-three years later, I put it on again.

 

It happened like this. I booked a vaccine appointment and called Tim (he’s away looking after his parents) to alert him that he could book one as well. He managed to snag one for the same time and place as me. Jokingly, he said ‘would you like to go on a date?’.

 

Jokingly because It’s been a long time since we dated. Of course, in the early, heady days of our courtship, we walked the walk and talked the talk, but two decades later, we’re so familiar and comfortable together that dating now equates with going to the landfill site (together!) to mark an anniversary. True fact: our wedding anniversary often coincided with the large item day at the local dump, and so the tradition was born of the dump date. It’s a perhaps ironic homage to the concept, but also a testament to the lesson we’ve learned that spending time together is what’s important, no matter what it is you’re doing.

 

When Tim asked me out on our corona-vaccine date, he said ‘are you going to wear the dress you wore on our first date?’ to which I replied: ‘I still have it.’. Beyond the silliness of the banter, I am touched by his remembering the dress, and by my own reluctance to part with it for all these years.

 

I’ve covered a lot of miles, literally and figuratively, since I first put on that dress. The world is a different place, whether for better or for worse – history will decide that. September 11th happened over 20 years ago. The Boston Marathon bombings were 8 years ago. And we’ve endured a year and a half of a global pandemic. In 1998, Katrina was just a pretty name for a girl and Fake News was not a thing. My father, who walked me down the aisle at our wedding in 2002, has been gone now for 15 years.  My niece and nephew, who were not even born in 1998, are now grown up or just about. It’s been 9 years since I last taught a class, and I’ve loved 5 dogs and three cats – and lost five of them – since the day I donned that pretty little dress.

 

Obviously, the skin I’m in is different now; I’m a lot more careworn and even more rumpled; I can’t remember the last time I wore makeup, and I haven’t been in a hair salon in three or four years. I sleep in my clothes because it’s just become easier to get up in the night to attend to the needs of a geriatric animal or a puppy. One of the joys of getting older is letting go of all of the esoterica and learning to accept your unvarnished self. I’ve accumulated a fair amount of fractures and scars over the last few decades, and I would not relinquish them. I’ve changed courses, moved houses, made friends and lost friends, shed tears of grief and of laughter, tried and failed (often) or (sometimes) succeeded, fallen and got back up, published a book, taken hundreds of thousands of photographs, run a couple of dozen marathons, returned to art, and travelled from the Atlantic to the Pacific. I’ve learned a few lessons and accrued plenty of memories, some good, some bad.

 

Call them aphorisms if you will, but if I could go back and talk to that girl who was me 23 years ago, I would tell her that it’s not going to turn out like she planned – and this is perfectly ok. Priorities change and circumstances intervene and open up new paths and adventures. Even the bumps in the road are valuable, because they force us to re-examine, adapt and grow. Everything we do becomes a part of the fabric of who we are. We are the sum of our experiences.

 

Finally, perhaps the most important part of all : make a conscious effort to take it all in, because it all goes by so incredibly quickly.