After seeing and hearing a spectacular performance by the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, me and Dawn spent dinner last weekend, in part, going over memorable moments from the previous year.  There were several we discussed; others went without our mentioning.

The space to do so, the room to remember, was an authentic tool for our marriage.  It has been a way that we’ve made sense of things over the years, particularly when celebrating our anniversary.

Talking about things that happened and people who happened has been for us a way of putting and holding together this grace-filled experience called marriage.  There are surely other times when we do what we did, remembering.  We recall what’s happened during the turn from one year to another.  I usually fall into a similar mental exercise around my birthday.

But anchoring memory and marriage have been helpful to me as a husband.  It trains me to see and attend to Dawn, to things which impact her, and to people and events that relate to us.  And it was wonderful rehearsing such times and figures from our story after having seen what must be described as musical movements by this country’s talented artists.