Happy 50th anniversary.

We were supposed to go to Napa and eat at the French Laundry for my parents’ 50th wedding anniversary. And we were going to delay it a month so we could all drive to Sacramento and drop Vince off at Davis in all one glorious, triumphant family milestone – but none of this is happening. Of course, it was cancelled months ago because of the pandemic, but I’m not sure we would have made it out there now with the fires making the air quality terrible. (And my beloved Big Basin! Burned so badly. I fell in love with Jeremy on hikes through Big Basin where he hiked in a delicious lunch which involved cutting boards, two or three kinds of cheeses, a loaf of french bread, a roast chicken, tomato and avocado which will alway remain my favorite of meals. I would not mind my ashes scattered in Big Basin to remain in all eternity among all those trees. Half in Rockville and half in Big Basin). My parents still wanted a celebration and I was resigned to doing a zoom call with take out from a DC fancy-ish restaurant, but Jeremy coaxed me out of it and helped me arrange a more glorious celebration. We arranged for outdoor tents to be set up in my parents’ driveway and have our friend Lauren (who is a professional chef/baker) cater a delicious meal. We’ve been in pretty good lockdown here, I haven’t spent time with my parents since March and they are good at wearing masks and so this was a huge expansion of our socializing. And we loved it. I thought I might not love it, but I loved it. I miss my parents. I do miss parties too.

My dad was like – oh Edda doesn’t need a mask which may or may not be true. It’s true Edda really does go nowhere. But it’s also true when she sneezes or coughs, she sends saliva flying everywhere.

Our physically distant tables.

And Lauren’s meal! Amazing. All our favorites!

We used all of my parents’ plates and they had these lovely retro champagne glasses, the wide ones, not the fluted ones. We are such unenthusiastic drinkers – I’m not sure we finished the one bottle of red, one bottle of white or the champagne. My father insisted on the “5” and “0” balloons. He texted many times – the number balloons! I need the number balloons. lol.