Today Is Twenty One December Twenty Sixteen

We met on this date at a reception at the Graduate School of the City of New York's Classical Language Faculty.  He was 46, I 59, he, taking a breather in his career, mid-life crisis, me having become a member of the Graduate School faculty and director of the program.  We treasure it as a wedding anniversary date because back in the day there were laws against solemnizing same-sex relationships and we would not have a wedding until eighteen years and one hundred odd days had passed.  Funny to think that there are still segments of the population who fulminate against sanctifying same-sex with all the truly horrible events and actions on display 24/7 in this great big wonderful country of ours.  We were all so proper, going on a dance date and other "getting to know you" events for over a month before finally one night at his apartment stripping off our clothes and getting it on while the Good Lord looked down from the sky smiling.  He certainly did not send accidents, pestilence, the diminution of income, nor sickness upon either of us.  Tonight we will go out together to a very fancy steak restaurant right across the street and have our anniversary dinner.  They know us as having a wedding anniversary on this date; it's in their books.  Yesterday I made stuffed peppers, a favorite of both of us, not the least difficult, only time consuming, and for the elderly, a triumph of memory in organizing the preparation and cooking of each part of the process.  This I did, and thereafter cleaned up the kitchen and the stove.  My husband cannot abide kitchens that are messy and awash with the detritus of a meal just prepared. Neat, neat, neat is his motto.  Which is perhaps why he rarely prepares anything that requires several ingredients and steps in the preparation.  As a teenager he worked in the kitchen of his father's cousin's fish restaurant and the experience left its mark.  He, to say the least, compulsive, I, definitely, am a mess.  Raised in a house where servants pick up after you is not the best training for adult life lived on your own.  But I manage, and he tolerates.  In some things we are as alike as can be, in others the tension of our differences is telling. But we manage.  We both have great senses of humor not least about ourselves and the relationship we have created.  He can be such a pain in the ass, the same observation he could and would easily make about me; but we are in this for the long haul.