Dave and Maren—Engaged!

On Saturday, Dave and Maren Facetimed us, with their announcement that they are now officially engaged. Sunday, they arranged a Zoom meeting with us and Maren’s parents, Bruce and Kim. On the Zoom call, each set of parents recounted the events of their wedding day. Theirs like ours involved less than optimal weather conditions for the big day. Kim noted that we had both planned outdoor weddings. Moving on, our meeting turned to the discussion of Dave and Maren’s nuptials, which at this point are still TBD.

Our discussion touched upon a few wedding topics, like food (Dave), location like at a winery (probably around the Finger Lakes—that’s my guess.), length of the guest list and 2021. There is a lot yet to plan, but as Maren said on the call, “I like to plan these things.” If the last few months have taught us anything, plan for the unexpected, that way you won’t be so surprised when it happens.

Anne has been engaged in a quilting project since we began our Coronavirus quarantine. Originally, it was going to be a memory quilt for her mother, but with her passing, it morphed into a remembrance quilt. Since then this project has taken on a life of its own. One side of the quilt is a recreation of the family’s tartan and the other side is a collection of family photos. She has special fabric that can be printed on. For weeks now, she has been rooting through the many boxes of old family photos that we have accumulated over the years. I was reminded of this project with a recent New Yorker cartoon. In this cartoon the wife is kneeling in the middle of a pile of old photos. Her husband is standing nearby and in answer to what he must have said, she says, “You’re wrong, Ted, this is absolutely the right time to organize four decades of photos.”

As Anne organizes her four decades of photos, she likes to show me the really good ones. In these old photos, we see our former selves and many others, as they once were. Prominently featured throughout this portfolio are pictures of the boys. While we were so much younger then, our boys were even younger. It is hard to telescope these images of them, some of them in diapers, and think of once little Dave, who is now a man and not so little anymore. It is even harder to imagine that our baby is now ready to take a wife. The feelings that I have over this prospect, have become one of the unexpected benefits of growing old and I look forward to more surprises in the future. Congratulations, Maren and Dave!