China, Platinum, and Pearls

When he first cheated - the online affair - we had just celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary.

The traditional gift for a 20th anniversary is china, all beauty and delicacy. The modern gift is platinum, because by then a marriage is supposed to have proven its strength. The color is green, which feels almost rude now, considering how much envy came later.

Delicate, it seems, was taken to a new level, since he essentially shattered our relationship with his betrayal.

Platinum turned out to be a farce since our marriage didn't have the strength to survive his betrayals. I accept no fault in this...I was determined to make it work. He, however, wasn't.

And green, the color of envy...because I began to envy all the people celebrating long relationships and those big milestones...20th anniversary, 25th anniversary...and beyond. I even envied the 10 and 15 year marks, remembering the happiness in our relationship at those milestones.

Today, June 16th, would have been our 30th wedding anniversary, and you know what, I'm ok with never having hit it.

It took years to get here. Years. Tears. Depression. Anxiety. That is what most of the past 10 years have been filled with. Not anymore.

Last year, something in me finally unclenched. I healed enough from Seth’s betrayal, Lance’s betrayal, and Andy’s toxicity to stop living inside the damage.

But I still have moments. I had one in April.

It hit me on April 21 when WCAX-TV shared a bunch of photos of lambs on Facebook...sextuplets. Are they not the cutest things you've ever seen?

The post brought me back to 1998, back when Seth and I were still in the Army and living in England. That spring, we took a bus tour to Wensleydale where we went to a farm and then to where they make the famous cheese. At the farm, there were lambs everywhere. We got to hold them, pet them, love them. They were so sweet. It was pure joy.

One of the ewes had had twins, and another ewe had a lamb that didn't survive. To reduce the risk of one of the twins not getting enough milk, the farmhands skinned the lamb that had died and put it on one of the twins, hoping the mother of the lost lamb would adopt one of the twins.

The sextuplets made me think of that trip, how much we enjoyed it, and the unique opportunity to see how they handle multiple births. My first thought was to share it with Seth, but I took pause. He gave up the right to reminisce with me about those moments long ago that brought us joy. I don't wish him ill will, but I have no interest in contributing to his happiness either. Since I am the keeper of those memories through scores and scores of photos, I get to choose how and with whom to share them.

I opted not to share with him. I opted to hold the memory for me.

And today, I opted to celebrate that 30th wedding anniversary in my own way because even though it ended, that day 30 years ago was one of the happiest of my life. Pearl is the traditional gift for this milestone, diamond the modern gift, white and silver the colors. So I bought myself a cute little mother of pearl, cubic zirconia, and garnet ring, with the garnet for my birthstone. Later, I’ll have a glass of prosecco in one of my Edinburgh crystal flutes, another remnant of that chapter in my life. Whatever else I choose to do will come from a place of pure joy: for the wonderful memories I still hold, for the life I have created in the aftermath, and for the future that keeps beckoning.