Anniversary
10/16/25
My 27th wedding anniversary was yesterday and I totally forgot. Most times I forget that I’m married, so I hope that Valentin enjoyed himself. It’s been a rough year with family health challenges, caring for my sister, who on top of being depressed about being legally blind, has some kind of cognitive disorder. Add to that my dog and my cat died and on top of THAT is the whole bullshit the current government is spewing all over us. Someone told me that she thinks my dog and cats and garden saved my sanity. That ain’t nothing but a WORD.
I am particularly grateful that Valentin didn’t expect me to work while I juggled the monkeys in my circus. He really is a very sweet man. When I’m gone, he’s lonely and misses me terribly. This time I encouraged him to go home to Paraguay to spend time with his papa, but he said he wanted to stay home and hold down the fort. Every few days when we speak, his sad little face, which I described as the Distressed Otter Husband, gazes back at me. People have asked me if he’s gonna come be with me while I travel and I say no. I prefer to travel alone. Valentin’s lovely and sweet, but he’s kind of boring. However, he’s stable and patient which is what I need. My appreciation for him grows stronger with each passing day. Most people wouldn’t have put up with this leaving and wandering with no return date determined. Indeed, I sometimes think that my traveling may be a contributing factor if he finally decides to leave me. I mean, he married me partly to keep him company. Honestly, I might’ve left me by now. I joke that I helped raise 6 of his kids so he owes me 6 years of vacation. ( I used to say that if I was working outside the home, I’d get 2 weeks paid vacay. But 27 years of marriage would only equal 54 weeks of time off, so this way I come out ahead).
When my first husband left me, he said “you always told me that what you wanted was freedom, and now you have it.” Ever since I was a child all of my games were about travel. My dolls rode horses as they struck out across the land to homestead, carved logs into canoes to explore waterways, rode the air currents in balloons and, once I became a Star Trek fan, beamed around the universe to “boldly go where no Barbie had gone before.” Travel was my goal, and marriage and kids were “incidental”. It’s what a woman did without losing sight of who she was as her own person. My parents seemingly had separate lives and a “successful” (as they defined it) 40 year marriage. They had separate bedrooms, separate hours, separate hobbies. They eventually moved into the same bedroom which I DEMANDED happen because my sister worked at a pizza place and REEKED when she came home. As soon as she moved out, Daddy moved back into his room and surrounded himself with piles of books. I figured that I could be free, be me, AND have a partner and children. Fortunately, I found a man who supported that idea without either of us knowing what that would look like. If he’d said that he couldn’t support my travel goals, I wouldn’t have married him.
Last year while I traveled, I did a lot of work around forgiveness and compassion towards him. We have what I call our “New Marriage” because the old one didn’t work for me. We’re still working out what that means. What’s certain is that we love each other deeply, and are committed to supporting each other. If the US situation clears up and there’s a guarantee that legal residents can come back into the country, I’d like him to meet me in Spain next year so that we can visit our compadres. He deserves a break too, to be loved and appreciated, to have the load taken off his back just like I did. He truly is Mi Amor.
