NO Black Friday at Our House
My List

Saturday Night

Out to dinner for our anniversary. A big occasion, an important date. Going  out to dinner in our family is usually limited to a quick meal of sushi since the husband's capacity for prolonged sitting without back problems is extremely low. We were all atwitter that it was Saturday night and we were putting on suits and dresses instead of driving to Borders for a magazine. 

We'd made the plans two months ago, keeping our fingers crossed that the good spell of no back pain would hold up and we wouldn't have to cancel. We were supposed to go with two couples that are our oldest friends, friends who danced at our wedding and knew us before we tied the knot. Then the date  changed and signals were crossed and one of the couples had to drop out, so one of  my sisters and her husband sat in for them and we were happy they could join us.

The restaurant was very warm and inviting, decorated  with beamed ceilings and beautiful linens from Provence, as well as heavy ceramic hand-painted dishes and a display of 3-foot ceramic roosters and turkeys. (I would have taken more photos, but I think the moneyed patrons would have risen up in alarm - I never saw so many white-haired, reactionary-looking couples in my life.)

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Here we are, looking very celebratory and mindful  of "occasion". I'm showing it to you in black and white because the whole evening reminded me of my parents and of watching them get dressed  to go out with their friends. My father would come down the stairs, resplendent in suit and tie and my mother would be applying a final spray of perfume and giving us orders of what to eat and what time to go to bed. I remember that deflated feeling after they left, of knowing that the evening was dry and dull and even torturous if one of my older sisters were babysitting and intent on controlling the TV and sending us to bed early. We don't really do evenings like that - so combined with the dressing up and dropping off the Teen to be with her cousins and my mother, plus the added surrealism of celebrating such a milestone anniversary, I thought I would picture the occasion in black and white like the old photos I collect and draw.

But this time, I was the one going out and we were so excited that we got to the restaurant 15 minutes early and had to have a champagne cocktail before everyone us arrived.  We started the meal with two "amuse bouches" consisting of a tiny strip of duck crackling on a pumpkin puree glazed with balsamic vinegar. I could have licked the plate. Next they gave us slivers of toasted bread served in a cup like coffee stirrers. Most of us had a first course of seafood - either a warm lobster salad in a vinaigrette dressing or oysters with a bechamel sauce.

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the food was too beautiful to portray in black and white. Stan chose halibut for his main course. He wasn't overwhelmed with the sauce, but it looked very pretty.

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My brother's-in-law entree of prawns was gorgeous.
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The rest of the table had rack of lamb. The adorable muffin was filled with a noisette of mushrooms, and all was glazed in a very rich sauce.

Dessert was splendid - chocolate souffles with a rich chocolate sauce that the server spooned into each individual souffle. Stan and I had chestnut creme brulee, which I didn't care for, but soon forgot when my sister shared her souffle. To top off our coffee, they gave us an adorable "trees" of petit fours.

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Try as we might, we were unable to finish every last one, so some went home in my purse and the Teen ate them up before  bed.

At one point during the meal, feeling splendid from the champagne, I looked at my husband, who was smiling broadly and rosy from the wine, and  I thought of all the holidays and events that we'd shared together. I've known him longer than half my life and he was there when my parents celebrated their 25th anniversary.We can be tempestuous with each other at times, and lately I've felt a little like roommates when we both are so exhausted from work that we barely kiss good night, but when we finally have time to relax and enjoy ourselves, our love pops back up and fills all the cracks and makes us whole.

We've grown old and fat and thin and young together. We've danced at weddings and stood witness at death beds. We've each steadied the other on trips from hospital bed to bathroom.  We've traveled cross country and spent months homebound. We've packed up our family and household four times and managed to have us all arrive safe and intact thousands of miles away. We've waited together for test results, for new jobs, and watched our bank accounts swell and disappear and swell again. We've faced unemployment, illnesses, and the faces of our children when they transferred mid-year into yet another new school.

We've also toured colleges - first for ourselves and years later, for our kids. We've had huge house parties when my parents weren't home, and snuck home early from our own weekends to see if our kids were doing the same. We've taken ferries under the Golden Gate and gotten drunk in Sausalito. We've sat on a blanket on the ground in a stadium in New Jersey waiting for Sly  to finally take the stage at 1:00 in the morning. We've driven straight from Cape Cod to Broadway because we had theater tickets. We've ridden horses in Yosemite and motor bikes on the cliff walk in Newport, the smell of the roses and the ocean making us swoon.  We've driven the family north for Christmas, with the minivan decorated with twinkling lights and a wreath and listened to Raffi so many times we'd thought we'd scream. We swam naked under the moonlight skies of California and  Memphis, and we've stood on the beach in a hurricane to watch the waves crash. We spent a week in the fog in Nova Scotia, left a camping trip in the Sierras early after a bear spooked us and our son threw up in our new car, and conceived our second child when a storm window fell on us in bed.

And all  of it  felt right and good and true.  I wish us 25 more years of Sunday papers and toast in bed, of Friday night sushi, of Christmas Eve lobster feasts, of sandy weeks in Cape Cod, and evenings with the fire lit and pizza on our plates, the news on, too tired to read the papers, waiting for the other to get up and shut the TV and lights, and turning over in bed to nudge the other to find the remote and shut the TV and stop snoring. Right, and good, and true.

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