We happened to have both raspberries and chocolate sitting around the kitchen and the taste of the two together brought back a favorite memory….
…When we were first married we would get together with two other couples for some fun adventures. One time, for Valentines Day, the men cooked a meal while we women went out and decorated aprons for them – each of us surprising the other! I think I remember vaguely how – while we were waiting for dinner! – we washed the aprons in snow by the side of the road or something like that, so that we could dry them quickly in a laundromat dryer and thereby prepare them for decorating with paints – ah, those early-married apartment-living laundromat-using days! If I close my eyes I can still see the picture of these three husbands wearing their aprons and together holding the masterpiece dessert: a delicious elegant chocolate and raspberry treat!
When I look back on the early years of our marriage I think about the lessons I’ve learned, mistakes made, and the ways Ted and I have changed and grown together. But I also remember in an instant, with the simple taste of chocolate and raspberries, what fun we had with our friends: playing a murder-mystery game, splashing in a pool, eating pancakes with maple syrup on a fall morning in Vermont, making aprons and enjoying a delicious Valentines dinner.
We’re still in touch with each other even though we’ve all moved away from the East Coast. One couple lives in Oregon and the other in California. Email and Christmas cards help us catch up on each other’s lives. The last time we all got together though was quite a few years ago. We all have kids: a total of 9! The pace of life is faster for us all at this stage.
Ted and I have much busier lives now, it seems, with lots of little children – and lots of laundry (what a blessing to have our own machines in our house!) – but I wish that we could find, here and now, still somehow, friends like we had back then.
2 responses so far ↓
1 emily // Oct 31, 2003 at 1:39 pm
Those were special times…life is so different now. God has been so gracious since… we have special friends to share faith and parenting adventures w/ now. Sometimes entire family sleepovers, coffee dates, quick phone calls in-between diapers and refereeing kids’ arguments, these things bless us now, (even emails to Africa w/ one family!). We wish the same for you. Thanks for the reminder of great past-times.
2 Katherine // Nov 1, 2003 at 9:49 am
I have pictures in front of me in an album from 1993 and 1994: the three couples kissing in Nashua, NH in July ’93, the Chocolate Raspberry Cake a la Simka in Providence (Valentine’s Day ’94), the aprons (ours still hangs on a hook in our pantry), the dress-up mystery party, the Maple Ribs at Parker’s Maple Barn, and Ted, Michael and Emily brushing their teeth in our kitchen…That was all so long ago and we have all grown so much and learned so much more than we knew then. And I presume in ten more years we’ll look back on this present time and say the same thing…