"You didn't have to," he said.
"Five years is tin, ten years is bronze and twelve is gasoline," I reminded him. Not that I couldn't have driven since I only indulged in two sips of his sweet dessert wine, but I was so giddy with the night I felt a little drunk. And it was a night for reveling in the countless gifts we have already accumulated in our years together - especially every day we have had with those two amazing children.
Not that our progression took us very far - instead of across town, we progressed from astounded at Spaggia's raw scallop with sea urchin (delicious orange goo that tastes of the sea) and finger lime (a New Zealand fruit formed in tiny crunchy bits of pulp that burst in your mouth like citrus caviar) to delighted (a perfect wild salmon sitting on a bed of mustard horseradish cream sauce and topped with pickled cucumber and a thin sliver of toasted pumpernickel that cleverly acts like the skin) to sated.
So the nightcap idea was abandoned and the trip to Mindy Segal's Hot Chocolate may have been a bit much, but it did make for the best moment of the night when we started talking to the big multi-generation birthday party next to our table and found out the birthday girl was born on the day of our wedding. Her name was Isabella and her grandmother wished us as many happy years as she and her husband of fifty had enjoyed. And boy did she look good for a woman married fifty years! Five of her nine grandchildren sat at the long table, a little one brushing the birthday girl's long hair with loving strokes.
Sometimes I feel like I'm tempting fate when I talk with Randy about my hopes for the girls and their futures. Such is the legacy of knowing loss too early and too well. But I saw two beautiful young women in short dresses and braids at the table next to ours at Spaggia and I dared to imagine our Mia and Nora for a moment, tall and capable, and the thought almost took my breath away.
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