Sue, with Lee Miller's Photographs

Tomorrow is thirteen years from the day Sue and I took a long walk from her house to Laurelhurst Park and told each other, for the first time, what really matters to us. What I remember is that she gestured to a tree by a pond and said, “All this. And we’re part of it.” I said something about the Buddhist parable of the strawberry, which she knew well, and we realized, almost in a joint flash of light, that our energies match. Some fundamental is in her mirrors some fundamental is in me. We get each other. We laugh at each other’s humor. I find her hilarious, a beloved fool. She giggles at my ironies and likes my earnest uprightness. We give, knowing that what’s given only ever existed to be given away. All at once, we knew. This is it.

Today she came over to my place to celebrate our anniversary. We set aside time to name our gratitudes to each other. I put together a simple dinner and then we walked to a restaurant for our favorite dessert, Boccone Dolce (French meringues interleaved with whipped cream and fresh berries). As we walked in the door we spotted two old women friends who just got married last weekend after 33 years together (we watched their wedding on Youtube). Utter coincidence. So of course the four of us sat down together and ate and talked about being old and what old love is like. 

The four of us, aged 78, 78, 79, and 83, laughed in thunderclaps, knowing that no one around us could possibly miss the fact that we are old. We feel old. We have trick hearts, collapsing spines, less agile brains, and cataract-growing eyes (except Sue, who has had hers done). Our hearing is failing, we dodder around trying not to fall over, we can’t remember what we did last week, and our joints ache. But we’re here. Alive and able to love all this a little longer. 

In the photo I made at my table, Sue, who will soon depart for a rafting trip in Utah, is studying the photographs of Lee Miller. After Sue's rafting adventure, we hope to see the movie Lee which has not yet opened in the USA.