365 Memories

My First Crush In first grade, I had a huge crush on a boy with the initials N. B. He had brown hair, bowl-cut style, long lashes over dark eyes. He was nice, not loud like many of the other boys. I remember a little kiss, but not sure if I'm inventing that—some small, innocent kid connection happened below an overhang on the playground where I was hula hooping with some other girls. At home, I took a tiny notepad my mother gave me and wrote a story in it in pencil about how we would be married. I didn't think again about marriage until twenty more years went by. I don't know whatever happened to N. B., and I haven't tried to find him. If I did discover his adult self on social media, I wouldn't contact him; it would be too weird, there's nothing to say. I don't know if he liked me, too, or what "liking" a boy or girl would even mean to a first-grader in the 1970s, but still, I remember him as my very first crush. Fondly. First Crush on My Son Thin...

Seven years ago this evening, I was in a New York steakhouse with my husband, enjoying a rare dinner out. Somehow he had managed to unshackle himself from his four-star job for a night, and we went to Sparks on East 46 th Street. I am pretty sure that my sommelier husband chose Sparks due to its wine list—a Wine Spectator Grand Award winner many times over. It was all the same to me. I like a good steak on occasion, but I confess that I have never really understood the steakhouse concept. Meaning that while I get that it's all about the cut of beef, behemoth -like on your conservative china patterned plate, I have always been offended that the vegetables are ordered on the side, charged separately. When you pay top dollar for a slab of meat, can't they just include the side dishes? And can't they be more inventive than sauteed spinach or a baked potato? Truth be told, I would have preferred going out for sushi, or to a great Thai or Vietnamese restaurant. But meat and p...

At some point, a marriage becomes a matter of routine; taken for granted. It's something that, being human, we are all guilty of at some point or another, despite the folly of the practice. We tell ourselves that it's just a comfortable sort of being together, worn like a favorite shirt that's fading at the elbows but still intact; more often, though, it's stagnation. It's our duty, I believe, to fight against complacency. Some people do this with reminders of those early days, however long ago, when everything seemed new. Others seek to replicate the newness by seeking future adventures, possibly crazy ones (depending on how prone to midlife crisis one is). Past, future . . . the best way is of course to pay attention to the now. And when you do that—really pay attention—you can amaze yourself with the power of your memory. My husband and I seem to be people who look back on the first blush when we want to rekindle. And our collective memory, I must say, is all abo...

OK, so after choking on this post for a while, I have realized that it is pretty much impossible to create something that will live up to the expectations that we (people in general, I specifically) put on the "big events," in this case my hopes for a post to perfectly capture a single facet of my wedding day in stunning detail. In part this is because I am tired today, but in part it's also due to the fact that weddings are like this for the couple in question—at least for most brides, I think: hard to experience fully in the moment. This is one reason why a good photographer is worth every expense; you are too invested, too much the director of this production to set yourself aside and just live fully in the "now" of it all. Our ceremony was lovely, beyond a doubt. It was full of love and joyful celebration and outrageous indulgence and passion. All these things, and yet it passed in such a blur. My memory of the event itself is a fragmented collage, a culmina...

As a daughter who enjoys a deeply bonded relationship with her father, a memory springs to mind now, on the eve of my wedding anniversary; a memory concerning a tradition I imagine might be perfunctory for some, but that for me was anything but: the father-daughter dance. I remember, in the months leading up to the wedding, agonizing over what song we should dance to. Whose idea was it, finally, to choose a song by Alan Jackson? By default, I assume it was my idea, but I can't remember the notion actually coming to me; it's possible he made the suggestion. Really, it seems just as appropriate (emotionally, if maybe not technically accurate) to say that we found the song together, both of us owning the idea equally. My father had been a fan of Alan Jackson since way back. I remember being college age when I first borrowed his album, Don't Rock the Jukebox , and heard Jackson's accented voice and his clever lyrics, humorous and soulful, for the first time. I appreciated h...

Sublime: We are standing at what seems to be the summit of the world. Cordes - sur -Ciel, France. A fortified town (" bastide "), founded by the Count of Toulouse in 1222 as a safe haven for the heretic Cathars . The old town juts into the sky, high above the valley below, even above the clouds. Our physical height begs for metaphorical application: a couple of days now before our wedding, and we are also feeling high on hopes for the future, the beginning of a new chapter of life. Inside the ramparts, we stroll with some of our guests, point out the sculptural details of 13 th - and 14 th -century Gothic architecture. All is beauty and bliss. Chèvres : Amid the tall stone columns of the open-air marketplace, under the thick wood rafters and medieval pennants in the center of Cordes , our sublime moment takes a turn toward the ridiculous. My husband is on a cell phone, checking in with the manager of the château in Couiza , where plans for our wedding reception are underway...

A good twenty-five years after I made that little girl's purchase of a doll in bridal attire (yesterday's post), I found myself shopping for my own wedding dress. I remember the process as a bit surreal, particularly for me—my friends will all attest to the fact that I am not a natural shopper, and often I will go out of my way to avoid the task. When I do venture into a clothing store, I am one of those customers who rebuffs the advances of overly solicitous salespeople. I prefer that they act like the best staff in the top restaurants, moving invisibly among clients, never intrusive (you shouldn't notice that someone refilled your glass), yet there at the exact moment you need them. I prefer that the salespeople ignore me, basically, and I almost never have an answer for the cashier who asks: "Was anyone helping you today?" No, thank god, I managed to give them all the slip. Of course, shopping for a wedding dress—perhaps the most significant, and likely the m...

Forty-three years ago, in the Greek Orthodox Church of Sts . Constantine and Helen, in Detroit, Michigan, my parents were married in a traditional wedding ceremony. Of course I don't remember this event; I was born three years, three months, and three weeks later. But a fascination set in long ago, and I remember looking at albums, at the square-format photos with thick cardboard backing, photos now bleached out with light exposure and age . . . Without the photo in front of me (I swear it), I can remember the exact orange-pink shade of the roses my mother carried, the cream color and elegant tailored cut of her sleeveless dress. I see her in profile: slim body, head angled down, youthful skin with full, flawless cheeks, the merest hint of a smile like a pale Mona Lisa. I see my father, brown suit (or was this just the discoloration of the print?) draped on a "tall, dark, and handsome" man. Not a trace of silver in his hair yet. He, too, looks fairly serious, but complete...

Somewhere in the later years of elementary school, say the fifth or sixth grade, divorce became an important topic of conversation on the playground during recess and lunch. I had at least one friend whose parents either were divorcing or had already completed the process. Prior to this time, I'm sure the word "divorce" had come up—I mean, I knew what the word meant and knew that some portion of my classmates' families were "broken" (which was often the word that accompanied divorce back in the 1970s and early 1980s, despite being linguistically judgmental and rather inconsiderate of the families in question)—but it had nothing whatsoever to do with my family. I remember sitting outside with my friend, in some more secluded spot on the school grounds, not far from the "bungalows" that served as our classrooms. We sat on a cement ledge, I think, facing a couple of trees, and this I remember, too: we'd eat pomegranates and sunchokes , foods that ...