We usually celebrate our wedding anniversary on our own. We've never made a fuss about such events. What we've always fussed about is our daily lives together, minute-by-minute, considering that to be of the utmost importance, the rest merely symbolic. As symbolism recognizing an event of the past, along with its importance to one personally as a signal event in one's life is important, but not as important as the way in which the present is carried out.

We honour past events by remembering them, and discussing them, but not by going out of our way to celebrate them as something more extraordinary than our lives together.

We usually please ourselves by using the occasion of our wedding anniversary to go off for a week of mountain climbing in the White Mountains, where we used to go annually with our children on vacation. Over the years, our physical endurance and capability has diminished so that we no longer climb the really tall peaks, and satisfied ourselves with the quite modest-in-height peaks, although accessing them requires great physical effort for people in their 70s.

Now such adventures, as we approach our 75th year, become more problematical, particularly as our two little companion dogs - the older of the two coming into her 19th year, reflect our own lack of capacity in achieving such time-consuming, energy-draining heights. But the area still beckons us for the beauty of the landscape, for the opportunity to hike those trails that are more modest in energy-output, and the sole mountain peak that we remain capable of ascending.

Oh yes; yesterday was our 56th wedding anniversary. We hugged and kissed and reminisced and got on with our daily concerns.