40 and 19

Tomorrow my husband David turns 40. We aren't doing much to celebrate it, other than giving him gifts. He doesn't like to celebrate his birthday any year, so it isn't just because he's now in his 40s. He was traumatized by a birthday as a child. He invited several kids over to his birthday party one year, and no one showed up! He even called one kid the day before as a reminder of the party, and the kid assured David that he would be there. David was so upset that he never had another birthday party. The next year he started the tradition of just going out to dinner with his parents and one friend, but even that didn't go well. His parents drank too much at the restaurant (banana daiquiris - it was the 1970s), got mildly drunk and embarrassed him. I understand why he has an aversion to celebrating birthdays now.

Tuesday is the 19th anniversary of our first date. It's one of our three anniversaries, as I believe I mentioned in an earlier post. It's the one that we have celebrated the longest, and since marriage or even civil unions or domestic partnerships weren't available then it was the only date that we had to celebrate. We also celebrate what we call our "San Francisco anniversary", which is also Valentine's Day. It was the day in 2004 when we were married when the city of San Francisco was issuing marriage licenses to same sex couples, but that marriage was declared "null and void" by the California Supreme Court. We also celebrate the day of our "real" legal marriage in 2008, but we had been together for 17 years by then, so to us it was just not a huge deal at that point. I think that I want to have a party for our 20th anniversary next year. Not that many relationships, gay or straight, make it to 20 years, so I think that we should celebrate it.