The basic definition of the word “anniversary” is the date on which an event occurred in a previous year. There are many events to which it can be attached. However, wedding anniversaries most often ring the bell, literally for those of us who got married at the Little Brown Church in the Vale in Nashua, Iowa.
Sena and I pledged our wedding vows there 43 years ago. We rang the church bell. If I posted the snapshot of that, my days would be numbered. I wore a suit tailored for a skinny young man. That outfit included the shoes. I had an afro haircut, which was the style back then.
Sena was beautiful. She still is. In the picture, she is laughing out loud as we ring the bell.
We stopped by the Little Brown Church about five years ago. We took a picture of the church bell rope. We didn’t ring the bell because there was no official person there who would have let us do that. The church recently reopened the church for services but because of the coronavirus pandemic, the web site cautions visitors about touching anything.
So, I have to try to imagine the bell ringing. I guess that’s fitting because many good and great things start with imagination.
We imagined moving to Ames, Iowa, where I graduated from Iowa State University in the mid-1980s. ISU has a pretty campus and the bells of the Campanile Carillon are there. We imagined a trip to Hawaii in 1997—and it happened. We imagined a trip to New York City in 2017 where we saw the Imagine mosaic memorial to John Lennon in in the Strawberry Fields section of Central Park.
Sena has a fertile imagination, which has led to many beautiful back and front yard gardens over the years. Some of the flowers remind me of bells.
Happy Anniversary. Let’s ring the bell.
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