What are the anniversaries you never forget?
One of mine, Feb. 7, occurred recently, a date seared into my brain as indelibly as Christmas, New Year’s and my birthday. It’s my parents’ wedding anniversary.
I usually remember the day without prompting, which I did, but even if I were to forget, I’d be reminded because one or another of my siblings inevitably calls or writes to say, “Hey, it’s Mom and Dad’s wedding anniversary.”
We’re not overtly sentimental about it. It’s just that we remember, and in remembering, take note. We may spend a moment ruminating on how complicated their marriage was, but we don’t linger. We laugh, we sigh, we move on.
But why, I found myself wondering, when the brain is clogged with so many dates and memories, does that date stick?
Why does any date, except your birthday, stick when so many others flutter into oblivion?
One of my brothers speculates we remember Feb. 7 because it was always honored in our house when we were growing up. The date was drilled into us by our father, who, despite his tough and sometimes mean ways, was the more sentimental of our parents about all things familial. Maybe he cared about the date so much because he knew it was the luckiest day of his life.
When I ask people if they remember their parents’ wedding anniversaries, some do and some don’t. Some point out their parents weren’t married.
“I think it’s Jan. 6, but certainly not sure!” said one colleague. “And no idea what year.”
Not even the year? Believe me, he would have known the year if he’d been born, as I was, only nine months after the wedding. He would have spent his childhood counting those months to make sure there were nine. In those days, a child needed to prove there had been no premarital hanky-panky. That’s one reason I remember.
If Facebook is any gauge, many people know and care about the date of their parents’ marriage. Nearly every day, I see anniversary salutes, either to parents still living or to those, like mine, long gone. Most are happy tributes to happy couples, though we all know happiness on Facebook is often a thin veneer.
Some people who remember their parents’ anniversaries are anniversary addicts. They remember, and mark, a wide array of dates, from the personal to the historical.
I have a friend who remembers the birth and death dates of various literary figures, along with the dates of his parents’ deaths and other events too numerous to mention.
I, in contrast, can’t keep the death dates of my parents straight, though Sept. 18 shines in my mind like a lighthouse. It’s the day I arrived at college and sensed my life was about to radically change. I always take a moment on that date to say thanks.
Anniversaries are a way not only of marking time but of organizing it. They keep the past in view. They’re a way of connecting the dots from then to now, of keeping our vanished people with us.
“The calendar fills up with ghosts as we go along in life, doesn’t it?” said my colleague Eric Zorn when I asked if he knew the date of his parents’ wedding. He did. They celebrated their 65th anniversary on Jan. 28, a date he figures he’ll always remember.
On Feb. 7, 66 years after my parents were married, my youngest sister called. She mentioned their anniversary. I knew she would. She remembers all the dates in our family -- birthdays, death dates, moving day dates -- even though, due to the peculiarities of her mind, she remembers nothing about her own life before the age of 9.
“How do you always remember our parents’ wedding anniversary?” I asked her.
She couldn’t say, but she did say, “They were really blessed that they stayed married all the way till Dad died. Pretty amazing, huh?”
Given the trouble they endured together, it was, yes, amazing.
My parents’ marriage was not one any of their children would want for themselves, but, in their different ways they loved each other, and for better or worse, they stuck it out till death parted them, when my father was 60. If they hadn’t been linked in holy matrimony on Feb. 7, 1953, in St. Joseph Catholic Church in Macon, Ga. -- two young people radiant with hope, unable to guess what lay ahead -- my seven siblings and I wouldn’t be here.
For that, we’re forever grateful, and so we pause to remember.