Old birds, and young

AUDIO at Substack

Thirty-two years ago today, guests at our wedding were gifted a small but meaningful take-home token of our nuptials: a scrolled passage from Wallace Stegner's 1976 prize-winning "story of a long marriage"-The Spectator Bird. 

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The passage continues:

It is something — it can be everything — to have found a fellow bird with whom you can sit among the rafters while the drinking and boasting and reciting and fighting go on below; a fellow bird whom you can look after and find bugs and seeds for; one who will patch your bruises and straighten your ruffled feathers and mourn over your hurts when you accidentally fly into something you can’t handle.

I've mentioned this more than a few times, over the years (partly from guilt, I've always regretted that our wedding planner-or whoever printed the scrolls-omitted the citation). But at thirty-two and counting I think we're finally qualified to speak as protagonists in our own story of a long marriage, and to corroborate the claim: it has been "everything"... 

And this anniversary year is special, too, because in a few months Younger Daughter and her own fellow bird will formalize their avian association. 

And so the story expands. The stories continue.

 

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*And who was the Venerable Bede?

Go ask Alice...