My husband George and I are going to the beach on Friday for the week, and during that time we’ll be celebrating our first wedding anniversary.  How can that be?  It still feels strange to call George “my husband.”  Sometimes I look at him in a kind of wondering, dazed way, and think, “I’m married to this man?”  And already a year gone.

This coming anniversary brings to mind the unfair, unwarranted, unbelievable passage of time.  Like most of us, I believe that I have forever–forever to travel, forever to write, forever to forgive, forever to love.  But then the markers come: another New Year, another birthday, another anniversary.  One day it’s fairly easy to do that 6-mile hike, and the next . . . well, not so easy.  My body is saying “slow down,” and yet I’m so hungry to soak up every moment of experience from every day.  Rest?  How unfair, to have to rest!

I realize that I’m trapped in the finite–with the infinite, there is no boundary called “time.”  But I’m flesh and blood, and so I hear the clock ticking.  I will not have a lifetime with my new husband, for instance.  I told him when we married that he had to give me at least 30 years.  But can he?  Can I give him thirty years?  I only know that every moment we share is precious.  I don’t want to waste any of the life we have left with wondering or arguing or posturing.  And yet because I’m human, I toss off moments like I have an infinite number.  This anniversary reminds me that I don’t.

Likewise, there are the children to consider: George’s children and my children, and our grandchildren.  We don’t tell our children while they’re growing up, “Life is not easy.  It’s hard to live well–to live with integrity, I mean.  It’s hard to love well.  Dangers abound.”  What do they need from us, in the years we have left?  Can we be there for them in the ways they need us?

And what about our work, our gifts to the larger world?  What remains to be given?  What is significant and what is not?   Our days our numbered.  Time pushes us to make choices.  Not that any one of us is irreplaceable, or is going to save the world from its headlong rush into darkness, but we have to answer to ourselves.  Have we exploited our gifts to the fullest, have we done what we have been given to do by whatever powers that be?

And so I approach this anniversary with some degree of melancholy, yes, but also with awe and thanksgiving.  I know the moment is everything.  I’m living with the full understanding that I will not be living one day, and that understanding makes each day sweet and full of possibility.  Of course, I’m heir to all the human stuff that plagues us all: I want to lose 10 pounds–well, maybe 15; I wish the construction noise would stop; I don’t understand why my husband take the longer route home, when I’ve told him better.  Let it go, I say, just let it go.  Pay attention to what really matters.