Working on a Mystery

My husband and I just returned from a long weekend in the Adironacks. We stayed at the Mirror Lake Inn overlooking Mirror Lake. This felt very appropriate considering we were there to celebrate our anniversary, a time of reflection. A time to look back at all that has gone before this moment—twenty-one years of marriage along with eleven years of friendship and romance. And before that, a life in which I could not have imagined finding myself celebrating a wedding anniversary on Mirror Lake.

I didn’t know it at the time, but this man is the reason I left Hollywood and moved back to Connecticut. He’s the reason I survived the Northridge Earthquake. He’s the reason why I took the teaching job at Fairfield University. He’s the reason why I have stayed in the Northeast.

But back in 1994 the future was uncertain.

This marriage has been an ever-unfolding mystery. Every day a new adventure. But, if you ask me at any particular moment, during the ordinariness of the day-to-day, I might say no--it’s not all that mysterious. But when I look back on the years with Dr. Thompson—it seems as if the universe has rearranged itself so that the two of us could meet. Truly, it’s all been a mystery—how I ended up in Woods Hole where he worked as scientist, how I watched him from our deck overlooking Waquoit Bay, digging for clams in the summer and scalloping in the fall. And how he’s now in his garden, with the turnips and the strawberries, the lettuce, the peach trees, the great red barns, the expanding universe.

We are now in our seventies, and our marriage continues to expand in amazing and surprising and yes, sometimes challenging ways. But as I write this, it all feels like a miracle.

Creative Friends—You will always working on a mystery. This can mean bad news and it can mean good news. It just depends on where you want to place yourself on the meridian. My advice--find a good place and pause. Breathe. Bask in the glory of the moment, knowing that nothing lasts forever.

Love,

Jamie