Today is our 9th wedding anniversary, we’re going to celebrate it with a one night stand at an ancient Vermont Inn on Sunday, returning Monday morning. We had a brief ceremony clinking coffee and tea cups at Jean’s at breakfast this morning.

We’ll save the rest of it for Sunday.

Maria is very happy today, she just sewed herself a pair of pink pantaloons we got at a fabric store in Glens Falls yesterday. Belly Dancing is very much about attitude, and Maria has plenty of that, especially in her new pantaloons, a traditional element of this dancing.

Maria and her fellow dancers are going to perform for three hours at the Bennington Farmer’s Market in a couple of weeks. I will get a rare look at her dancing. There is much art and ritual to belly dancing, coin vests, bracelets, zills,  turbans, skirts, pantaloons.

Maria has taken to Belly Dancing in a way I would have thought inconceivable when we got married nine years ago. She’s not one to flash her belly. When I met her, she was shy, insecure and very quiet. No more.

Our anniversary today is an opportunity for me, not to gush about our marriage, I do that all year, but to consider how much both of us have changed, and how grateful we are for the presence of one another in our lives.

The Belly Dancing is a fitting symbol of that.

My changes have been mostly internal. I believe I have changed, evolved. Her changes are both external and internal – her art, her confidence, her poise, her attitude.

The Willa Cather girl is diverse,  as Tarzana, she saws limbs off trees and stacks firewood one day, the next the might be in a Frieda Kahlo artist kind of mood,  creative and rebellious, making beautiful the hell-with-you Goddess or vulva art, gorgeous quilts and hanging pieces, and then the next day shaking her hips in her new pink pantaloons.

I can’t wait to see what happens next.

I love all these Maria’s, I feel today is about change and learning and the power of love to bring about both.

A meaningful weekend for me, too. I’m bringing computer into the shop on Saturday,not getting it back until Tuesday. I’m migrating my many thousands of photos onto a new photo management program for me – Lightroom – as Apple’s Aperture will no longer be support in a month or so.

I can use Maria’s computer to post, and I’m sure I will, but Sunday and Monday will be silent days for me, not because of the computer, but because of our anniversary. It is definitely something to mark.

I think all of the Maria’s are coming.