One Year

One year ago today, just around this time, Andrew and I were getting married at The Summit. I’ve always heard that the first year of marriage is the hardest, but for us it wasn’t hard for us at all—easy, in fact. Blissful, even. And now we’re one year in.

We celebrated this weekend by going to Glen Ellen—and by enjoying a rare few days of rain. Not just drizzles—constant, hard downpours, the kind that has California drivers skittishly pumping their brakes and driving slowly on the highway. It was wonderful. The rain was still coming down when we reached the Sonoma plaza on Saturday afternoon, and we splashed our way to Murphy’s Irish Pub for lunch. Chilled and wet, I ordered a cup of hot tea; it felt like fall.

After tasting some wines at the Valley of the Moon winery, we checked into the Jack London Lodge and turned on CNN. (It’d been a few hours.) We had dinner at The Fig Café, one of my very favorite restaurants in California. I had a delicious carrot fennel soup, followed by pot roast (again, it felt like true fall); Andrew had a fig and goat cheese salad, followed by steak frites. We shared a bottle of Benziger syrah and a brownie with ice cream for dessert. It was immensely pleasant to enjoy the Fig Café’s amazing food with the rain clattering against the windows. Outside was the smell of wet, fresh leaves.

Sunday, we had breakfast at The Garden Court Café—just across the street from Fig—and then took advantage of a break in the rain to take a two-mile hike through the Jack London State Park. Andrew spotted a mountain lion, which was both exciting and more than a little terrifying. We’ve seen many signs warning of their presence in our various trips throughout Northern California, but this was our first actual sighting. He said it was nearly as big as a Golden Retriever. We hiked a bit more cautiously after that, looking over our shoulders.

Soon it was time to head home. It had finally stopped raining, and the day was bright and clean and very November (though warmer than Novembers back East). Unlike last year, when we were so exhausted the Sunday after the wedding that we drove the wrong way down the PA turnpike for thirty minutes on our way to the airport, we arrived home without incident. And though we wished we were on our way to Nevis instead of back to Sacramento, it was hard to feel too sad; I’ll speak for Andrew as well when I say we were feeling just very happy and lucky to have each other. One year!