There's something about Mary. But even more about Eleanor.

[captainsblog]

It's utter coinkidink that this post follows my Mariology of the other day, but on that same day, I heard from a third Mary.

She was a long-time friend of mine from law school, recently reacquainted on Facebook. We never dated, but shared many miseries about our respective dates of the era, and were, and still are, just good buds. She'd asked me for a restaurant recommendation for her sister and bro-in-lo (who I've represented at a real estate closing sometime in the past century), and I passed along the downtown small-plate place we spent our last anniversary at.  She messaged me yesterday to thank me for the rec, and to glow a bit about it being her 25th wedding anniversary that very day.

This, I knew. We were there. They had a young and rather impulsive priest who presided over the Sacrament, and we then participated at a goofy table where a fellow law-school classmate of ours led the group in a round of a rather bizarre game with the waiters called "There's a Hole in My Roll."

We'd flown downstate for the ceremony and reception. The night before, I believe, we stayed in the Vista Hotel in between the towers of the World Trade Center.  (It, um, no longer exists.) I briefly gave thought to proposing to Eleanor at Windows on the World or somesuch, but the closest I got to that was in our somewhat subterfuged inspection of the nearby Winter Garden, which, blessedly, does still exist.  Instead, after we spent the night after the wedding at my sister's on Lawn Guyland, she suggested to me that someplace pretty, and permanent, and quiet, like the sands of the nearby Jones Beach, would be a good idea.

I took her up on it. And, that day, Eleanor took me up on it. Twenty-five years later, we've survived so much, and so many, and filled so many of those 25 years with joy and humor and an amazing daughter.

So thanks for the invitation, Mare. Even though there was a hole in our rolls.

I'm keeping the default icon on this one in loving memory of MASH's, not Dexter's, Harry Morgan . Much as I've loved the past 25 years, 96 is an even more impressive number:)

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[snowy-owlet.livejournal.com]

Oh, yay.