For our tenth anniversary I thought I would do something really special.  This is a bit of a big deal for me – I am hopeless with it – as is the Mr – primarily due to when it falls.  We got married between Christmas and New Year – a genius time to get married… the year you get married.  Everyone is in that ‘I’m-a-bit-bored-of-sitting-in-the-house-and-eating’ mood and desperate to get away from the relatives.  So a small wedding with a mahoosive party was a brilliant idea for all of our seasonally affected friends and family.

The years after it’s not so phenomenal.  As an anniversary it does, in fact, suck.  You are ‘eaten out’ so can’t be bothered to go out for a posh meal, and even if you could it would primarily consist of turkey.  You have forgotten to buy a card and of course everywhere is shut now, even if you could muster the willpower to crawl across your front door and battle your way through the wind and snow.  You would love to buy a ‘significant’ present – you know, like all those people you know on Facebook who got married in the summer and have nothing impeding their celebration of not having killed each other for another year and go on picnics and the sun shines and they buy ‘cotton’ and ‘tin’ presents and stuff, but you on the other hand have used up your one and only idea on the Christmas present – how are you meant to think of, and produce a second one after only a couple of days?

But I was determined that knitting was going to make it different.

Everything would change now that I could MAKE a present.  It was our tenth anniversary – it was important.

So I covertly cast on a pair of socks.  I had huge aspirations – I would buy a card, I would knit some socks, I would present them to him wrapped (and not in Christmas paper) and they would show just how much I cared.  I knit them on the metro on the way to work, I knit them in my lunch hour.  I knit them when I couldn’t sleep and the Mr was in bed, I knit them at the lake when he was at the pub.  But then it was Christmas.  And we were away.  I only had one and a half socks.  And a pit of despair – I had essentially failed.

The anniversary was no different – apart from that I had bought a card.

I didn’t knit the socks any more as I felt sad when I looked at them and the anniversary slipped by.

I found them last week having buried them on more than one occasion.  And yesterday I picked them up and finished them.  And it felt no different.

We have been together nearly twelve years and we are happy on more than one day of the year – so does it really matter they weren’t ready?  It turns out probably not.  And I think that there will be plenty of time for me to knit some other ones over the coming years – maybe just not with the deadline of an anniversary looming.

 

And however long it took to knit them, it didn’t make them fit any better.