Airing Out a Quarter-Century Marriage

Last Valentine’s Day, the Man I Married and I celebrated the 25th anniversary of our engagement, when MIM put my own ring—inherited from my grandmother—on my finger while we camped in a borrowed tent on a free beach. To celebrate the quarter-century millstone, I mean milestone, we foisted the Little Monster off for a night onto The Agitator and Kansas (my brother and his wife). MIM and I hadn’t had a night together without the Little Monster in almost three years, when his Ohio grandparents watched him while MIM and I had a wild and woolly night in Toledo after an Ohio Turnpike scenic drive (the same scene for the entire length of Ohio). Unlike in Seattle, where you can’t throw a hemp grocery tote without hitting a Prius (although it’s usually a Prius hitting a pedestrian, since nobody can hear them coming as they make forays to purchase medical marijuana or hunt for mushrooms), we saw exactly one Prius, a vintage model, the entire cross-state trip and back. Other than that observation, much of that weekend is a pleasant blank, as Toledo and the Turnpike tend to be.