"O she doth teach the torches to burn bright" (Romeo & Juliet)

Twenty-five years ago today, Rhoda and I were married, so this is our "Silver Anniversary" (as you can surmise from the text color...well, it's as silver as I could make it). For the past 24 years I've been able to remember to get Rhoda a card; I find it mystifying that this very year fate has prevented me from doing that. Not that I want to make Hallmark any richer, it's just what we've been doing for each other on these occasions. However, since I've come home from the hospital, I've not been able to get out to buy a card, and so guilt-ridden as I am, I've decided to dedicate this blog to her as a way to express my love for her and for what she has meant to me since that day we were wed. I met Rhoda at a house party on New Year's Eve, 1978. I had recently returned from my year's sabbatical during which I fly-hopped all around the world engaging in my own version of Indiana Jones. However, it was a lonely ride, and back home again, I was unabashadly looking for someone to love, since I still had a lot of it left, unused.

When I sauntered into that house, well...there she was, a "Barby Doll" of a woman in a tight fitting brown cordoruy suit. To shorten a long story, we spent the evening together with our drinks, sharing stories too long and sordid to narrate in this venue. It also happened that we lived in the same development; she with her two children, a scroungy cat, and a nosy dog. Both of us divorced; she after 12 years, I after 30. Fast forward from 1978 to 1982 and I retired in June of that year and moved to Florida to be closer to my mother and sister. But in 1983 I went back north, married her, and fetched her to Florida kicking and screaming. I say that really, only metaphorically; but she was only a child of 45 in a 55-and-older community, and she was not a happy camper for a long, long while. But to my astonishment she remained with me...and still is. Because now she finds all the new residents are in her age group; and now I find that I'm the one at the bottom of the wine barrel with all the other decrepit versions of elderly judaism.

So, what has Rhoda meant to me? A whole new lifetime. I've been in awe of her without limitation. She is the most caring person I've ever known. There isn't anyone she knows or loves who is in need of a sympathetic ear that will lack her attention and support. Whatever my own needs are or have been, she has filled with unselfishness and devotion. I cannot imagine what my life would have been without her by my side. As Shakespeare said of Cleopatra, "...age cannot wither, nor custom stale her infinite variety." Do you think I love her? Haven't you been listening?

Happy Anniversary, my sweet love.