Trains of thought

Early yesterday morning, while dealing with some of my business email before breakfast, I was reading a message from a customer who was apologising for being late with a payment – she’d been distracted by her wedding plans.

It’s can be quite interesting where email ‘conversations’, sometimes with people totally unknown to us, can lead. The first thought that came to mind was “I wonder when she’s getting married?”. This was quickly followed by the recognition that I’d got married in January myself, and I soon was recalling the stifling Northern Victorian heat of the day, and the wedding reception afterwards, held at Mitchelton Winery. At first it slowly dawned on me that it must be close to my own anniversary, but when I looked down at the calendar on my computer desktop it then hit me with the force of a freight train. Today was 30th January. Today was my 19th Wedding Anniversary. AND I’D FORGOTTEN IT.

Oh my goodness! The first time I’ve ever forgotten our anniversary. 

So, I dashed off a reply to my correspondent thanking her for what she’d (unwittingly) done. It was 7.30am, and  she’d given me time to redeem myself by getting a card before my husband returned from work.

I then wondered whether my husband too had forgotten the significance of the date – he’d left for work without any hint of recognition. But no, by mid morning he was on the phone to me saying that, as I was sleeping like a log when he left, he’d decided to leave me be. At that point, the thought crossed my mind that I could pretend I’d never forgotten at all ? I thought wiser of that and confessed my sins, but explained how it was words of a total stranger that led me to remember before it was too late. That all the ‘daydreaming’ (that he often accuses me of) can actually be a useful tool.