An Anniversary

It is August 19^th, and the Jansens are on the move again. We left my Dad’s house in Chelsea, MI this morning after spending 2 days there visiting my family. We are currently in Hamilton, Ontario (Canada, eh?). It seems fitting that we should be traveling today, as this reminds me of another traveling day exactly 19 years ago.

 Just before heading out this morning

On August 19^th, 1996, Dan and I were finishing the process of leaving Evanston, Illinois and moving to Somerville, MA for Dan’s new tenure-track position at Tufts University. It was a Monday. The movers were supposed to have come to pick up our furniture and boxes the previous Friday, but did not show up, and phone calls to their office went unanswered. So unfortunately we spent the weekend living with boxes. 

Fortunately the movers showed up on Monday. It turned out that I stayed at the apartment to oversee the movers while Dan headed back to Northwestern University to officially turn in his PhD thesis. In the afternoon, we cleaned up the apartment (I loved that apartment in South Evanston. It had a brick wall, sun porch and a uniquely-textured living room ceiling which we named “The Funky Planet”) and tried to figure out what to do with the remaining items that did not fit into our 1986 Honda Accord. One item that did make it was the frozen top tier from our wedding cake of the year before. Our plan was to drive the 4 hours to my family’s house in Chelsea that night, a first-day distance which had originally seemed quite reasonable. 

But between one thing and another, we didn’t leave Evanston until that evening. We ended up getting into Chelsea at about 11:30 pm after an exhausting day. Just enough time before midnight to drag ourselves into the house and have some of the now nicely-defrosted wedding cake, for August 19th, 1996, was in fact our first wedding anniversary. If you’re counting, this also makes today our 20^th wedding anniversary.

I don’t remember most of our anniversaries. We tend to be pretty low-key with anniversaries and birthdays as a general rule. During the B.C. (Before Children) era, we would typically go out for a fancy dinner, although the only one I remember with any clarity is the Four Seasons in downtown Boston. But we will always remember our first wedding anniversary because of the uniqueness of that day.

So it is fitting that we will always remember our 20^th wedding anniversary because we are again traveling. In fact, right now we are traversing almost the same route that we took 19 years ago from Chicago to Boston. 

We have gone through a lot of changes in the past 20 years. Kids, pets, jobs, houses, cities, states. Currently we are in the midst of a quite challenging change, uprooting the family to spend the fall semester in Connecticut. 

Yet I am also reminded of the fact that throughout the past twenty years, Dan and I have successfully navigated all of the challenges and changes because we have done so together. And so, while I am uncertain about what lies ahead of us in Connecticut (I hope it is great things, but if you know me you know I am not very good with uncertainty!) I know it will be OK, because Dan and I will be facing it together. Happy 20^th Anniversary to us!

(Obligatory wedding photo)