On the 18th of August Merry and I celebrated the 35th anniversary of our nuptials. Only three short years ago while visiting my mother we celebrated our thirty-second anniversary in a French restaurant in San Francisco, little knowing that our destiny would take us to the very heart of France, Paris, so soon after.
We had some wonderful plans for this most recent occasion, a lovely dinner cruse on the Seine River. These plans were brought low as a result of weather. It was overcast a rainy all that day so we adapted. Together with our umbrellas we walked over to a second-hand store … well it is more like a pawnshop … a couple of blocks away. We splurged on nine DVDs for one Euro each and spent the day on the couch cuddled up together watching a strange assortment of old movies and observing the weather as it rolled past our windows of our eleventh floor apartment with a magnificent view of Paris and the Eiffel Tower.
Later in the day I went out, again with umbrella in hand, to one of the many local “boulangerie” (French for bakery) and bought a scrumptious decorated chocolate moose cake. (The bakeries here have amazing things to choose from.) I mentioned to them that it was for our anniversary so they asked if I wanted any inscription on the cake. Most of this discussion included some pantomime to bridge the language barrier. (My French has not improved all that much in the little time I’ve been here.) I did write our names down so they would spell Merry correctly.
I brought it home and, after dinner, we opened the box with the cake and discovered it said Happy Birthday Merry & Rob. We laughed for a long time. Of course the French call their birthday an anniversary. I wonder if they thought it was peculiar for two people having a party because they bother had the same birthday or maybe fraternal twins? I’ll never know because I wouldn’t know how to ask.
Below is a picture of the cake which hardly does it justice. It tasted wonderful.
