Our first date was on the Fourth of July. We went to Cathedral Rocks and looked at snails. We spun fire and saw some fireworks. Then we made some of our own!
Years later we returned there and ryn recited a poem to katja.
In between . . .
- one day, it was early in, you opened the coat closet off the kitchen in my apartment in arlington and said, why is your coat closet full of jars of plants?
- i think we formulated a tea together.
- you taught me arts martial and i taught you arts botanical. and then we just started learning it all together.
- you taught me some Russian, too … it occurs to me that actually our first not-yet-a-date was when we ate Himalayan food at that restaurant that isn’t there anymore, and then i read H.D. out loud to you, and you read Akhmatova to me – and kept interrupting the Russian to translate all the words, and it was charming.
- you followed me to the desert to my first herb conference in an eon. as i remember, there were spiders in that room. and bunkbeds with not enough blankets. and that’s where we met paul bergner and where you met jim mcdonald…
- good things have happened at conferences. we drove cross-country for one, once. i’d never done that before. that trip was full … it had the Parthenon, and the City Museum, and the Canyon.
- and Taos – and don’t forget Ojo Caliente! and we fed llamas. llamas are charming, too!
- also, at other times, goats and sheep and chickens. but one thing that always comes up when we talk about that trip is the night we tried to stop in Arkansas.
- the campground was half a mile from the Mississippi river, as it turned out, and the mosquitoes were so bad none of us could stand it. we packed the tent all up again after half an hour, and you drove through the night until we got to a rest stop in Texas … you got fairly good at driving straight through the night on that trip, actually!
- we were all covered in bug bites for days. we’ve gotten bug-bit a lot together, actually … that second Fourth at the rocks we were lucky, it was a full moon and we spun fire by the sea, and there weren’t too many bugs that year. they were back in force the next year, though!
- there was that harbor seal that hung with us that year on the rocks, too . . .
- we danced a lot. we danced at conferences, and at concerts –
- – like when Rising Appalachia played here, and dedicated “Swoon” to you & your kitchen.
- and we gardened! despite some obstacles, like when that landlord razed our vegetables while we were in the middle of moving them. but we did rescue solomon’s seal, and nettles, and primrose.
- the first time i actually met you, you stabbed me in the finger. that was also charming.
- we bled for science.
and you got laser eyes. except you almost didn’t because of choking half to death on garlic. - garlic had it out for me, for a while there.
- you learned to drive a stick!
- yeah, it turns out you can’t really get going from zero if the shifter is actually in third instead of first…
- we rode some horses!
- mostly in the woods. woodsy horses!
- woodsy horses in vermont and woodsy horses in arizona, though, the woods were all quite different. you didn’t fall off even once!
- when i first met you, you didn’t have any vines. now you do! and i have wings!
- we got some books too…
- we discovered the spell of the sensuous, and njal, and we read the entire hobbit and lord of the rings outloud to amber
- and every word from every book of harry potter… and the Tiffany Aching books! ach, crivens!
- we have sort of accumulated a few books. you already had a bunch of books…
- that’s how you knew you would like me!
- and now we have a bunch more
- we’ve been all around! we’ve spent time in maine, vermont, rockport, the pemigewasset, boulder, arizona, new mexico. not texas, though we tried.
- well and i did finally succeed in hanging out there this year
- we gave up shoes! and furniture! we installed a pull-up bar and started walking everywhere. we joined the circus
- which started out in the old auto garage in the back of a cross-fit box by fenway
- that’s also not there anymore
- we have learned how to do impossible things. we have discovered that some impossible things are entirely possible. like, supporting two full time herbalists in the same family.
- and buying land. you were so upset, for a time, that we would never have enough money to ever own land. you were so upset about it and really down and couldn’t shake it. so i googled that day and found that land and then you bought it! we just asked the guy to let us pay him slowly and he said, sure!
- yeah, after that, everything sorta seems pretty achievable. even fitting two cats, a dog, and a 10-year-old into this apartment.
- tangle really needed a friend. we finally found this beautiful cat online and went to the shelter. it was hard to convince amber about minnie because there were so many kittens and minnie was so shelter-shocked, but finally she let amber pet her, and amber agreed she was the right cat.
- and she *was* the right cat! we got her home and suddenly she was all scritch-ma-belly! … later, amber wanted a dog. i have been learning how to dog. it has been taking a long time.
- not so long, you’re doing really good!
- elsie is a good dog.
- amber is twice as old now as she was when i met you
- a little more even
it’s been really wonderful watching the two of you build a relationship. i’m so grateful for that! - i am learning how to kid!
- we built amber a playhouse, we built three offices, and started making over that apartment
- we’ve done a lot of painting. and we built a ceiling that one time! that was…fun
- we built a lifework too… i was so scared to try to be an herbalist in a city – i thought it wouldn’t work – but together we found out that city people want plants too.
- it turns out, a LOT of them want plants!
- so, now we’ll go and say some words together. . .
- and we’ll kiss!
- and we’ll go see what kind of herbs they have in iceland!