An Anniversary Card for Helen

While it is New Year’s morning for everyone else, for my wife, Helen, and me it is also our anniversary. And, not just any anniversary, but our thirtieth. As usual, we face New Years day and our anniversary here on our farm in Humptulips County. As has been true for almost all of those thirty years, our son, Peter, is with us today. True, this particular residency of his is temporary as he returns to his new home in Eastern Washington tomorrow, but, for now, here he is. At age 28, he represents a goodly amount of the thirty years Helen and I have been together as a married couple and the fruit of our marriage.

Much has changed over thirty years. First, there is Peter himself. He wasn’t with us when we started this journey, but the journey wouldn’t have had much meaning without him. The farm, too, is new, since we began our journey together by being married in our home in the city – the home we moved away from almost exactly twenty years ago because we needed room for Peter to be able to run at will and to be closer to Helen’s parents who were nearing the end of their time together. My parents and Helen’s both left us during our thirty years, but now reside with us here on the farm in our memories. My oldest son, Don, and his family (his wife Sarah and my two granddaughters, Chloe and Emma) are necessarily residents of our farm as well, even though their physical home and lives are in the Northeast, thousands of actual miles from our home but still within the expansive borders of Humptulips County.

While at any given time the residential core of our home is just the two of us, when memory cares to recall it is well populated with families and friends at every stage of their respective ages, conditions, and spirit. Memory easily serves to populate the farm with visits from sons and daughters-in-law, grandchildren, sisters and brothers, sisters-in-law and brothers-in-law, nephews and nieces, great-nephews and great-nieces, close friends and casual acquaintances – I can see their faces now in the dark of an early Winter morning when, as usual, I am the only one awake in our home. The warmth of their visits keeps this home well insulated from the cold that swirls around its exterior this bitterly cold January morning.

Of course, the presence of some is more palpable than that of others. Peter is as much of the fabric of this house as either Helen or I could ever be, even if his room has given way to library and studio. His footprints are everywhere on the property and his spirit dwells in the folds of our land and the walls of this house. We wouldn’t have purchased the house but for him and his needs, and we remain on the farm even as he makes his own life in another physical biosphere which is another odd corner of Humptulips County. While Don never physically lived in this house since we bought it after he went to college, the exact moment when he convinced me of his self assurance and courage lives on in a particular corner of our living room, a moment I never fail to relive when I pass through the space where I was then standing. Our closest friends, Tom and Carrie, also reside in our home permanently courtesy of Carrie’s innate graciousness and Tom’s wonderful, thought-immersing watercolors, many of which bless our walls. I have only to turn a corner or climb a stair to see one of Tom’s paintings, to marvel at his sight, vision and skills, and to hear anew the sounds and movement which have always been resident in his work – at least when experienced by me. While they physically live in Humptulips County not far from our farm, a part of them is of this farm.

Thirty years is simultaneously a long time and a mere moment in time. Helen and I have known one another for forty years, for she worked at the first law firm where I was employed when I began my career. When we first met, neither one of us had any notion that we might become married one day, for each of us was then married to another and fully engaged in trying to be successful in our respective relationships. It was only as a result of our respective failures in those other relationships that we eventually considered this life we now share together, an adventure that would have been mutually unimaginable when we first shook hands as fellow employees.

We come from similar times and backgrounds – both of us were raised during a period of major change in American society in families rich in love and spirit but poor and lacking in wealth. We are both progeny of the Sixties. My first recollection of Helen is both that of a slight, very pretty girl in short skirts and of an efficient, hardworking legal secretary. I noticed her both as a fellow employee and as an attractive woman. And, while the latter was initially only an observation, after my own circumstances eventually fell apart of their own weight, her attraction proved the initial force that eventually brought us together as a romantic couple several years later. I believe that both of us were equally surprised to discover that we were suddenly part of something much greater than a handshake or a work relationship.

Helen and I have lived many lives together in our thirty years of marriage: as a young couple in love, without major responsibilities other than food and housing; as proud, young parents of an infant and toddler, with all the attendant responsibilities and joys; as middle-aged, working parents of two young boys, one of whom belonged solely to us and one of whom was regretfully but necessarily shared with a coterie of others; as delighted grandparents of two lovely and lively young girls with dedicated parents, each of whom, granddaughters and parents alike, makes us smile and laugh aloud; as proud, mature parents of two young men now living apart from us who are both successful in their chosen callings; and, now, as the only physically full-time residents of this home. Each of these lives has had its own challenges; its own benefits and burdens. While some of our coupled reincarnations have been more successful than others, because of our love we keep on trying – reinventing as we go, and adjusting as we must, to the situations and conditions which life presents to either of us – since if one of us is affected, so, of necessity, is the other.

In short, we are married and hope to remain so for the time allotted to us.

Amid all of the memories resident in our home, all of the importance that each of Don and Peter has made in our lives, all of the pleasure that Sarah, Chloe and Emma have given to us, all of the losses we have endured due to the passing of family or the migration of friends, and all of the enjoyment we have derived from our many friendships, nothing is more important to me than Helen. Without Helen, there would have been none of the other, and I would have been someone else with other memories, other connections and without this farm here in Humptulips County. This farm is as much of who I am as are my private thoughts; this farm is as much thought as it is a physical presence; this farm is my home and hearth and Helen makes it uniquely so. Humptulips County is my state of mind and she is its constant, essential ingredient.

Happy anniversary, Helen. I confess that in the press of business I forgot to get a card, and I hope this will serve in its stead.

About Gavin Stevens

Humptulips County is the wholly fictional on-line residence of Stephen Ellis, a would-be writer, an avid fan of William Faulkner and his Yoknapatawpha County, and a retired lawyer.
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