Leap day special

If you are one of those who expect their partner to remember the important anniversaries you should pay particular attention to choosing a memorable date for your special events whenever you can. For example, my husband always remembers the anniversary of our engagement. He remembers it even the three years in between when we do not need to raise a class because the date doesn’t exist.

This was only the second anniversary since our engagement although we’ve been married for almost seven years now. We celebrated the day most appropriately for our age: at an ophthalmologist, at the hairdresser’s and out at lunch. We almost went to the movies but because of the eye drops received at the doctor’s we just drove home and had a nice cup of coffee with a drop of port and a piece of chocolate banana cake and another of Alexander’s cake, both halved to serve two as we often do.

Our wedding anniversary is another date hard to miss but that happened out of a happy coincidence, some might think out of divine intervention. We had set a time frame (spring) and were looking for a date close to a bank holiday to be able to take a short honeymoon (to  Paris) without disturbing our employers too much.

We chose the Ascension Day and thus the wedding day became one of those that have grown rather popular during the last decade with the same two figures for the day, month and year, which we noticed only later. Actually, this is quite handy. As years go by many of us will probably start to find it even harder to remember anniversaries. We only need to figure out the year or month and the rest will be obvious. So far we’ve managed to perfection.

PS. According to tradition in some countries including mine, women can propose marriage on leap days but I didn’t. Just telling. I suppose I made it clear much earlier.

Another PS. I can hear someone wondering, “But what about memorizing birthdays?” I admit you may need to develop some mnemonics or use other memory aids to deal with those. I happened to have divine luck with the ones I could be held responsible for: my son was born on the ‘anniversary’ of the United States of America and my daughter on that of the European Union. I’ve certainly done my bit, don’t you think?

Place Vendôme, Paris.