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There are only two ways to live your life.
One is as though nothing is a miracle.
The other is as though everything is a miracle.
-ALBERT EINSTEIN
IT WAS SIXTEEN years ago tonight, January 29,1985, when the big, bearded man in the dirty beige parka picked me up for our first-ever date. It was a cold Tuesday evening, although we pretended it was Saturday, a little trick we perfected during the years I worked week-days and he worked nights and weekends. On that first night in New York, we ate Indian food at a hole-in-the-wall, then walked around the city, stopping for drinks every now and then to thaw out. Mostly, we talked - about life, work, ourselves-and we kept right on talking until the buses had stopped running and I had to take a cab home. Just before we said good night, we walked down a side street, past a bakery. The place was closed, but the display window was all lit up, and we paused to check out the fancy, overpriced goodies. That's when we saw it, on top of a linzer torte: the fattest mouse in Manhattan trapped inside the window, happily gorging away. The last of our first-date nervousness melted away as we stood there and laughed like hyenas. We still do, whenever one of us brings it up. It was an arresting sight, incongruous and rare, not unlike finding love on a side street at two in the morning in a city of eight million souls.
We've been celebrating that cold winter's night ever since, with candlelit dinners and long, moonlit walks, smarmy cards and champagne and tandoori, along with the occasional marzipan mouse. And while we also observe our wedding anniversary with similarly romantic gestures, I think we look forward to this even more. Because, unlike our wedding day, a day we orchestrated, planned, and rehearsed to the letter, January 29 simply happened, due to forces beyond our control. And as it unfolded, on a cold Tuesday night, the ordinary became extraordinary: the wondrous, mysterious, marvelous-a miracle, in other words.
If you think you have yet to experience a miracle, perhaps it's time to rethink what that means. The miracle that brought you and your soul mate together is the best place I know to start. Once a year, why not give it a night all its own? To look back in wonder. To give fate its due. To lift your glass to the forces that joined you.
Copyright (c) 2001 by Nancy Shulins
