My friend, Red Eft, took some time to update her blog, Oswegatchie, to write about her recent 10-year wedding jubilee.

This summer we took time out from a lot of things to stop and celebrate 10
years of marriage and my husband’s 50th birthday. Our 10-year Jubilee,
as we called it, featured a ceremony at our UU congregation, a dinner
for family and extended family, a night away alone for me & my
husband, and still to come, a weekend marriage workshop. We have a lot
to celebrate. At our ceremony, friends lit candles and shared
stories—our idea was that this should happen periodically before
you die, and it was extremely moving and rewarding. The highlights for
me were when my dad said of me and my husband, "Everything they touch
comes to life," and when my brother said "Last night I lay in bed in
their house, listening to the rain, and there is so much love in that
house, you can feel it." My brother and my nephew sang "Speak Low"
together, my brothers-in-law did a couple of humorous songs, and our
dear friend Louise sang "Tiptoe Through the Tulips." Our families of
origin were together en masse for the first time since our wedding.  That felt great.

We
had an amazing caterer (note: Eat the Daisies) who understood our ‘concept cake’ and brought it
to life. Two big sheet cakes in pale green icing, joined by a mirror
covered with a blue glaze—on which little figurines of me & my
husband sat in a rowboat—represented the Hudson Valley and the past,
our journey upriver to our new digs in Kingston. A three-tiered cake
climbed by more clay figures of me, my husband and our kids,
represented the mountains and the present. (My son made his own figure
and it looked a lot like the oppressed artist in the claymation short
by Jiri Trnka, "The Hand.")

Photograph by Hugh Crawford.

(Please
note: I did fix the oars so that I was holding them properly, but
unfortunately not before this documentation was made. I’m not sure
anyone got a picture of the whole cake, sad to say. Let that be a
lesson.)

Our gala days draw to a close and we look now toward autumn, the dreamy time of year.

Here’s a poem we love by Janet Holmes that our minister read at our ceremony:

Other Longevities
Janet Holmes

If, like snakes or reptiles, we grew with years,
then imagine the huge elderly, slowed
with age and bulk, frequenting
delicatessens, libraries; crowding
laundromats; taking whole booths to themselves
in family restaurants. The ample bodies
of the long-married, ambling their constitutionals.
The memories, all of smaller times.
Regardless of our wisdom or kindness, faith
or virtue, regardless of our capacity
for loneliness or independence, we would each grow
larger and more splendid,
and, lying down, would dream again and again
of childhood – the narrow long road back
to the vanishing point – each new dream
permitting another to be forgotten.

© Copyright Janet Holmes. 
Reprinted from The Physicist At The Mall, Anhinga Press, 1994
[Published December 9, 2001 in the Santa Cruz Sentinel]
[Also appearing on various websites.]