(Extra) Ordinary Matters ~ 23 Years

Yes, this is still 30 Days of Photographs II. I just got tired of typing that in the title.

Tomorrow's prompt is: Time. Piece. Of. Cake.

April 15, 1989 ~ April 15, 2012

"Love one another, but make not a bond of love:

Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.

Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup.

Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf

Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,

Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music. 

Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping.

For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.

And stand together yet not too near together:

For the pillars of the temple stand apart,

And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow."

As we stood before the JP, we shakily promised each other everything forever. We chose the Gibran quotation for its simplicity, beauty, and the message we believed we understood.

We practiced the vows but paid no heed to the cautions in this poem. It took time, pain, and willingness for us to finally understand, appreciate, and practice the wisdom of those words.

We are not one.

We do not complete each other.

The "ties that bind" once threatened to strangle us.

While we're each moving in the same direction, I walk a path far different from the one my husband walks.

Without our autonomy, we would never find our way back to one another—to that together place that belongs only to us.

Happy 23rd Anniversary, Hon.

It's been a hell of a ride.