Me & Butter

Today is our anniversary.  Our 2 year anniversary.  The Cotton anniversary..

And we both forgot....  

That’s right, both of us forgot our 2 year anniversary!

We laughed about it last night and this morning..  How could we both forget? I know we have a new baby, but forget the whole thing?  How did we do that?  It was an awesome wedding!  

Although most people say that, but our’s was, to us.  Small, intimate, with only close family, in the lovely Farmington Hills Michigan, where her parents live.  No “friends” were there.  Either you were a blood relative or non blood family, you were family...  There were no “friends”, only family.  And lots of love....

The gorgeous Nollywood (Nigerian Hollywood) superstar Stella Damascus graced our affair, at our Nollywood only table with Daniel Ademinokan, Robert and Debbie Peters, Bianka Johnson, Chuck and Chi-Chi Ajoku, as well as Bode and Tosin Ojo, whose GoldenIcons.com site even covered the event. 

My father-in-law married us.  My eldest son, my best man. Rebekah’s grand parents drove from Illinois and are the sweetest couple you'll ever meet.  And whom, with some of her aunts and uncles, ate pounded yam and egusi soup and loved every drop.  The cultures and families merged beautifully.  

We were then off to Turks and Caicos for the honeymoon.  A place so beautiful that we still want to go back there and live permanently.  Wonderful times, wonderful memories.

Then how did we forget our anniversary? 

We realized, much like we don’t celebrate Valentines Day, we don’t need a day to celebrate our marriage because we do that every single day.  Every single day, I thank all the blessings I received when I met her.

When we first met, she told me she felt like she knew me.  I fell into her deep blue eyes.  I already knew her.  It’s like we both have always found each other, in this life, and others.  Which makes it odd to say we are celebrating our 2 year anniversary..... Odd because, we have always been together.

Even when we were apart, when we did know each other, when her parents were in Tallahassee Florida waiting for her to be born and I was small child in Queens NYC, we knew each other...  Everyday inching closer and closer, till the day we met, again, in the that kickboxing class in CKO Carroll Gardens Brooklyn.  Another great story for another day....

You know, we didn’t say those words for a long time.  We made a point not to say it to each other.  We resisted that temptation to say those 3 words, until we were positive.  Until we were sure.

We were both coming from failed marriages.  We had seen the world a bit and didn’t trust it.  Love, like life, gave as much bad, as it did, good.  But the taste of bad lingers like a sour emotional after taste, spoiling your palate for anything, or anyone, new to come after.

Butter makes every thing taste better 

I remember the first time I called her that.  She asked me why, I said she was smooth, and spread easy on my soul.  And even then, we didn’t say it.  We dare not say those words, till we are positive.  Till we were sure...  

"Me too"

That’s what we would say to each other.  Finishing the unspoken sentence, the deep longing we felt for each other.  

Today, we enjoy every second. There are times I almost feel ashamed of the embarrassment of riches she is to me.  People wonder how we did it, how we found each other.  Don't ask.  We don't know.  We only feel like, in a past life, this one, or the next, we would have found each other.  

That's why we forgot today was our anniversary, because every day is our anniversary.

Rebekah Anekwe does not need one day to know what has been so, and will remain so, from the past, and for many many eons to come...  For she hears it everyday...

I love you.

- Chet Bashari Anekwe -