Sylvia's Journal

We started celebrating our 33rd wedding anniversary on Thursday evening with a surprise ride, at least for Axel, to an unknown destination. I let the GPS do the talking, and so, as we got closer and closer to our destination, first entering Beverly, then Salem, he began to guess. When we stopped in front of the Waterfront Hotel & Suites in Salem the surprise was complete and over.

We checked in and then walked to a restaurant in back of the hotel on Pickering Wharf. We ordered what we wanted without looking at prices, which made the dinner about even with the cost of lodging. The restaurant (‘62’) is an upscale Italian restaurant with a creative bartender, cook and sommelier. The dishes were small and attractively plated. Our desert was accompanied by two tall glasses of Prosecco, compliments of the chef, for our celebration. If my gift to Axel (a night and day out) was transient, his to me was forever, two seaglass earrings from a local artist with small silver dragonflies. From my medicine card days I remember that dragonflies are reminders to tend to oneself. I haven’t done that well lately.

I had taken Friday off so we could sleep in and do whatever we pleased. The weather wasn’t entirely cooperating as we walked in the freezing rain to a longtime favorite restaurant (Reds) for breakfast. The benedict meals we ordered (accompanied by Irish pork and cod cakes) left me without any desire for food until 7:30 PM. We had to buy Tums to help our stomach digest the rather rich fare. At that restaurant one would not know there was an obesity crisis brewing in the US.

We window shopped for a bit which wasn’t all that much fun in sleeting rain and found refuge in one of my favorite yarn stores (Seed Stitch Fine Yarn) where a young mother with her baby, same age as Faro, was tending to her knitting and child, a challenging combination. I bought a knitting bowl, a ceramic pot with a slot of the yarn, to keep it from rolling all over the floor and appeal to cats and babies alike.

Next stop was the Peabody and Essex Museum where we renewed our membership and admired an exhibit about modern Indian art after watching a fascinating video of Nick Cave and his soundsuits dancing on an all white screen, a modern version of African witch doctors.

We ended our 24 hour celebration with a Vietnamese shrimp and noodle meal and watching no less than 3 episodes of MadMen. Today we entered our 34th year of being together, what a ride!