Megadates
This week, Logan and I will be celebrating our 22nd anniversary. We were married just 10 days before Christmas on a snowy Spokane day; he in a rented tuxedo and I in a white satin ball gown with a red velvet wrap that I sewed myself (the wrap, not the gown). I was heavily influenced by Martha Stewart in those days, what can I say?
On that day, with stars in our eyes and love in our hearts, we were completely oblivious to the reality of the timing of our wedding. The reality was this: Each successive year, we would be trying to celebrate our anniversary at what might possibly be the busiest time of the year.
Christmas presents for the kids – not anniversary gifts – would be forefront in our minds. Band concerts and basketball games and gingerbread-decorating parties would take up every free moment we might have thought we had, and celebrating our love for each other would take a back seat to the pile of Christmas cards that needed to go out in the mail and the five dozen cookies I promised to bake for the church Christmas party.
In short: The days leading up to Christmas would be a challenging time to be celebrating an anniversary. However, several years ago, Logan and I came up with a work-around that turns our busy anniversary timing into something we look forward to all year. We call it “the megadate.”
The megadate usually takes place over a weekend close to our anniversary. It is a full 24 hours (sometimes more) when we leave the kids with a sitter, book a room in a downtown hotel, get some Christmas shopping done and enjoy life like a couple who was married in, say, June.
A romantic dinner always starts our megadate off right, usually followed by a movie that has been Julia-approved. Julia-approved movies include romantic comedies and action thrillers that don’t take themselves too seriously. Movies that are NOT Julia-Approved are any that star Adam Sandler, feature race cars as a major plot point or involve the fighting of aliens in outer space.
Dinner and a movie over, we come to Logan’s favorite part of the megadate, which is, of course, when we’ve settled into our hotel room for the night and I coyly reach into my suitcase to pull out … my bright green Christmas binder filled with detailed lists of all the gifts that still need to be purchased.
“OK, let’s talk about the Lego Store,” I say as he eats a handful of Peanut M&M’s in defeat. “Should we hit it first thing in the morning tomorrow, or try our luck in the afternoon?”
When it comes to this question – and all questions of the Christmas logistics variety, really – Logan couldn’t care less. Logistics are merely a hindrance to his free-spirited approach to Christmas shopping.
He’s the kind of person who walks into a store, spins around as if he’s Tom Hanks in “Big,” and just starts gathering things up in his arms. Anything that looks fun or cool is fair game: remote-control cars, wireless headphones, board games, hiking gear, whatever.
It’s true that shopping is not Logan’s nor my natural habitat; neither of us has much stamina for it. But if we’re together, and have come to an understanding that we can stop to have a snack at any time, we can get a whole lot done.
And the kids are definitely glad their dad is involved in the gift-buying process, because things that I pick out are a little more … how do you say it? Boring.
We’re a good push and pull, Logan and I. I’m the yin to his yang, the snow to his globe. Or, as Paul Child says to his wife in the Julia-Approved romantic comedy “Julie & Julia”: “You are the butter to my bread, and the breath to my life.”
We didn’t know it 22 years ago, but that snowy December day was the start of a life together that is still worth celebrating, even at the busiest time of the year.