A wedding anniversary
For their anniversary, the story of the two of them, told by both
A long marriage is one story told by two people who do not agree on it. An anniversary is the day to ask for both versions. The interviewer visits each of them on their own, so nobody is corrected mid-sentence, and the book puts the two accounts side by side.
What you give
A listener, a message from you, and in time a book.
A thirty-second message from you to open it, and one from each of the children if there are several. Both of them hear it at the first visit.
Separate visits by voice, fifteen minutes or so each, starting with the meeting, the proposal, the wedding and the first flat. Each tells it their way. The interviewer notices where the accounts differ and asks about it, kindly.
A book of the marriage, with both voices in it, built as they go and read by the family as it grows. Chapters where they disagree are the ones everyone reads twice.
How to give it
4 steps. You do the first one.
Buy it once, in the weeks before the date. One payment, no subscription. The recordings belong to the two of them.
Record your message. Say what you have always wanted to know about the two of them.
"Happy anniversary, both of you. I'd love to have your stories, and I want to hear the proposal from each of you separately, because I don't think either of you is telling it straight."
Give it at the anniversary meal and ask the first question at the table. Then arrange the two first visits for different days.
Suggest they do not compare notes until the chapter arrives. The book is better for it, and so is the dinner conversation.
Questions to start with
Ask one. Then follow it.
Written for the person telling the story. The full list is at questions to ask your parents about love and marriage.
- What did you notice first about the other one, and what did you notice second?
- What did your parents say when you told them?
- What went wrong at the wedding, and who fixed it?
- What was the first place you lived together like, honestly?
- What was the worst year of the marriage, and what did you decide at the end of it?
- What does the other one do that still makes you laugh?
- What did you learn about being married that you would tell someone on their wedding day?
- What is the thing you have never said to the other one that should be in the book?
If they are not sure
It is theirs to accept, or leave.
Often one of them is keen and the other is not. That is fine; this works with one voice, and the quiet one can join later or not at all. Nobody should be interviewed to balance a book. If the reluctant one worries about being contradicted in print, tell them the book keeps both versions as both versions, and that each of them approves their own chapters.
Tellforth
The best gift is being asked.
Everything else is a way of saying so.
Updated · Plain-text version of this page: /occasions/anniversary.md