Eva's bad with calendar dates. Like, I mean, really, really bad.
She has diverse and sundry talents, but remembering on which day something happened -- and often which year -- is not one of them. She defends this, and she has a point, by saying it's enough THAT she remembers something without having to give a fart in a glove exactly WHEN it happened. Birthdays, aside from the milestone ones (one of which she will be having next month, the big five-oh) are essentially meaningless to her.
Accordingly, it was I who reminded her this morning that today was her and Mark's fifth anniversary.
This, strictly speaking, is not true. Eva met Mark towards the end of the first week of July, 2014. Because she had no idea the date would matter, she doesn't recall it...and so the first three years they had a floating anniversary, celebrating their day sometime in the summer. Last year, they crystallized it on August 11th.
We commemorated a lot that day. Their anniversary, his 60th birthday, her birthday a month early, my new job...we had a get-together at Laurel Creek Conservation Area that was both deeply meaningful and a lot of fun.
This year? They went to the movies yesterday without even knowing why (giggle). Saw the latest Quentin Tarantino flick, the kind of thing I wouldn't be caught dead watching. Hated it, the both of them. They were both considering walking out halfway through, but neither one turned to the other to ask.
I didn't meet Mark until a couple of days before I wrote this blog in February of 2015. We were all going in blind; I'd never met a metamour (that's fun to say out loud!) before, and Mark had never heard of polyamory before he met Eva. We were both nervous, of course, but Mark can project a fierce calmness (and that is NOT an oxymoron) when he needs to. I was at ease quite quickly and I think he was as well.
Things fell together re-Mark-ably smoothly. He moved in here a little over a year later, and so we have been a family unit (in poly terms, a non-hierarchical cohabiting MFM vee) for a little more than three years now. (Our polycule has since expanded further, and a day will come later this week when I'll write about that, but this is Eva and Mark's day and I'd like to keep the attention on them).
I think moving in here really did give Mark a new lease on life. When he came, he brought his beloved (and ancient) cat, Olivia, a purry wisp of a thing that made friends with Tux and Mooch and Bubbles before, sadly, passing away. Our Mooch, who really was the cuddliest and most adorable cat I've owned in a long history of owning cats, immediately took to snuggling Mark at bedtime while his brother Bubbles watched from the floor. When Mooch died suddenly and tragically, Bubbles took up his brother's job.
And then there's Dolly. We got her two years ago last month. After Tux's passing, the truth was that we were going to wait for many years before we got another dog...not out of any dislike for dogs, but simply because dogs tie you down. But Mark wanted one, and he made me want one, and I made Eva want one, and behold.
Dolly loves all of us, but she is most emphatically "Papa Mark"'s dog. She's rapidly approaching the intelligence level of my dad's old dog Heather, who was the smartest dog I ever met. Just yesterday, Papa Mark threw Dolly's Outside-Ball into the low hanging branches of a tree. Dolly jumped up and down peering up into the foliage until she located the ball, then tracked the branch back to where she could reach it, bounced up, grasped it in her teeth and shook it. The ball dropped. That's one MASSIVE leap of logic for a dog to make.
She spends most of most nights ensconced with Papa Mark, who loves her very, very much.
A hell of a lot has happened in the five years they have been a couple. A hell of a lot. Eva's been to, and through, some very dark places as the long term effects of her bariatric surgery asserted themselves with a vengeance, and both Mark and I have carried her at times. Mark himself had a heart attack and a longer-than-expected hospital stay. We have leaned on each other, for the big things and the little things, the way families do. And we will continue to do so. Because it's about love, and love means commitment. They can't marry, of course....scratch that "of course", because I believe they should be able to...but Eva wears Mark's ring proudly along with mine, and I wouldn't have it any other way.
Happy anniversary to you both. May love grant you many more.
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