Today, November 26, 2018, is our 41st wedding anniversary. I’ve been on a “forty years ago” kick recently, and so I started wondering about our first wedding anniversary. Unfortunately, I have no memory of the day nor of any celebration of our first year of marriage.
November 26, 1978, was a Sunday—the Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend. I wrote last week about my memories of Thanksgiving Day 1978, but I don’t remember how we marked our anniversary at the end of the holiday weekend. We might have gone out to dinner. Or we might have spent the day in the law library catching up after being away for a week—after all, the end of the semester was rapidly approaching.
I do remember later celebratory trips we took. We went to London in the summer of 1979—a delayed honeymoon and congratulatory trip after our law school graduation. For our fifth anniversary in November 1982, we went to St. Genevieve, Missouri, leaving our baby son with my husband’s parents.
But our first really memorable anniversary trip was for our tenth anniversary in 1987, when we went to St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands. By that time, we had two children, and again we left them with my in-laws.
It was my first trip to the Caribbean. I’d never seen water so turquoise. Nor had I seen lizards like those that crawled through the open-air restaurant where we ate breakfast. Brightly colored buildings. And heat and humidity, even in late November.
We stayed in a smallish resort on the outskirts of Charlotte Amalie. We rented a car and drove all over the island to many of the tourist sites (such as Fort Christian and Blackbeard Castle). We drove through ritzier resorts that we didn’t think we could afford at the time, and I dreamed of someday going back and staying at one of them.
One of the beaches where we swam
We swam at many beaches and snorkeled a few times, though without my contacts or glasses I couldn’t see much. We sat on hot sand and watched the crabs scuttle by.
We ate at several fine restaurants, many of which had lovely views of the water. One involved a winding road up to the top of a hill overlooking Magens Bay. We ate at some not-so-fine restaurants where we sampled plantain and other local delicacies.
One day we took a ferry to St. John Island, just to see another beach. Though just a few miles away from the developments on St. Thomas, St. John seemed incredibly unsettled. We took a short (but very humid) hike from the ferry terminal to Caneel Bay, where we swam and picnicked before hiking back to the ferry. My husband dreamed of returning to St. John and staying in a tent camp he read about. I’d prefer to have air conditioning, which is why I liked the ritzy resorts.
One of the tiles we bought in St. Thomas in 1987
My husband and I have never been very good at picking out souvenirs from our trips—little tchotchkes that collect dust and remind us of our travels. But on our Virgin Islands trip, we did buy four tiles depicting famous buildings in St. Thomas. Those tiles are hung in our kitchen now, as they have been for about thirty years.
In a few months, we’ll have to take down those tiles, along with other pictures and mementos hung in our house. We’ll try to find a place for our St. Thomas tiles in our new home. But even if we can’t, I’ll have the memories of my first taste of tropical paradise. And I still dream of going back to a ritzy resort.
What big vacations do you remember?
We had several memorable holidays together. The one in Greece and the one in Israel are the most memorable, because the others had been local. And for the one in Israel it was my husbands first plane flight.
Ireland and Holland on two different trips.