The Power of Rest

Anniversary Pie

Yesterday was our 18th anniversary, but I did not buy my husband a gift. Instead, I baked seven pies; two chocolate creme, two bakery shop lemon and three strawberry rhubarb. I kept three, but gave the rest to my spouse to deliver as tokens of appreciation to individuals he felt he owed debts of kindness and gratitude.

He mentioned taking me out for fondue, but I figured he'd be too tired. "I'll take a raincheck. Maybe next year," I muttered to his back. It would be our 19th. The Bronze anniversary.

Bronze symbolizes suffering, strength and trial by fire.

Year eighteen, with its traditional gifts of porcelain and garnets, hadn't been a banner year, or put either of us in a gift-giving mood. Porcelain is impractical and outdated, and seems best relegated to the backs of curio cabinets alongside the rest of the wedding bric-a-brac. It is notoriously brittle and likely to shatter if handled with a rough or careless hand. Chips and hairline fractures can be repaired, but are nearly impossible to hide.

Garnets are lovely, but I prefer the traditional Bronze anniversary stone, the aquamarine, which matches my eyes and is said to protect the wearer from poison and affords luck to travelers crossing stormy seas. Garnets have never suited me. Red is simply not my color.

I believe, as wholeheartedly as I can, that next year's anniversary will be worth celebrating. As symbols go, bronze bodes well. More durable than porcelain, it is strong and tethered to the earth, made more beautiful with the patina of age. Bronze can be endlessly reshaped and polished so that even the deepest evidence of imperfection can be erased with a deft enough hand and the patient swirls of a buffing cloth.

Pies, however, are not nearly as forgiving. I've given up on the notoriously difficult blueberry pie, which happens to be one of my husband's favorites. Even armed with his grandmother's foolproof recipe, my blueberry pies emerge with teasingly golden brown crusts, hot and bubbling from the oven. But underneath, they're always a disappointing, runny mess. Impossible to cut and serve. A disaster on a plate.

The ficklest fruit pies were too taxing for my 18th anniversary. I could not judge the mercurial nature of ripeness or task myself with guesswork, so I stuck with my own blue ribbon choices: chocolate, lemon and a strawberry-rhubarb, all especial favorites of my late father.

Although he was easy to please, lemon squares were his real favorite. I made a double batch on Father's Day and his birthday. The smell and taste of lemons still makes me miss him. He loved everything lemon, and nothing was too sour for his liking. His advice when we married: "The secret to a happy marriage is goodwill on both sides."

My parents managed to celebrate forty seven wedding anniversaries before my father passed away from a stroke. Although they were not always blissfully happy, my mother continued to reach for him in the night, even ten years after he'd died, always believing he'd be there on the opposite side of their bed.

Their love, steady and solid, was more burnished hardwood than hap dash oak or knotty pine. Worn smooth from constant pressure and touch. Warm, worn and joined with a deft and expert hand. Not something today's hasty, mass produced finishes could ever hope to replicate.

Only time and skill can bring out the finest qualities in wood. Patience allows masters to work beyond knots, interlocking grains and discover the depth, luster and beauty in the roughest of materials. The beauty of wood lies, in part, in the workman's hands, and can sometimes be found hiding beneath the surface of a even a cast off piece of lumber. One destined for the scrap heap.

By seven o'clock on our anniversary, I felt the familiar twinge of a migraine coming on, the bands tightening around my head like a crown. In no mood to make dinner, I sat my children down to sample the pies, the four of us like nursery rhyme characters, with my husband off to deliver his wares.