Happy Anniversary To Us!

Today is our fifteenth anniversary! Hooray!

Fifteen years ago, I was eighteen years old, just started uni, a huge new world that had me wide eyed and finally free of the cloistered life I had led previously. Within weeks Mat and I were circling each other, and after a few drunken pashes we decided to give it a go.

The funny thing is, I had already started and ended a two week relationship by that stage, with one of Mat's acquaintances, so Mat totally expected me to have my way with him and do the same. He even made a joke of it when we first decided to be an item, by celebrating our one minute anniversary. A good friend of ours, Mr Pi, bought us nachos to help commemorate the occasion. It was 7.22pm on the 21st of March 1994.

And here we are, fifteen years later, still together, and still very much in love. So much has happened, the ups and downs that you hear about but don't really understand when you are young. We have supported each other through deaths, through drug addiction and recovery, through a heartbreaking breakup and a sweet blissful reunion. We traversed the spectrum from not wanting any kids at all, to thinking OK well maybe one day, to yes we will try, and now we have our beautiful baby girl, the most gorgeous culmination of our love that I could ever imagine, even on the wildest of psychedelic trips. And we had our fair share of those as well.

In fact our cosmic union happened while high on LSD, camping in a friend's backyard, soon after we got back together. We traversed the universe together in that tent, and saw that we were indeed the true companion of the other, that no-one else could ever even hope to fill that space. It was during the come down from that trip that I doodled the design of the rings we now wear, the rings Mat's mother asked us to have made on her death bed a few days later.

So what did we do today to mark this most auspicious occasion? I suggested to Mat that we could get my mum to look after Indi for a few hours, for the first time ever, and we could go to fed square and have some Mohito's while watching the sunset, or go to Fairfield Boathouse and have a devonshire tea and row a boat down the river. He suggested we lay in bed and fuck. It didn't take me too long to realise once again that he is a wise man, a wise man indeed.

So after Indi woke up from her afternoon nap, we took her to Anne Anne's house (Turkish for mama's mama), and with trepidatious hearts we left, not knowing how she would handle a few hours away from us, albeit with her beloved grandma. I think Mat was more nervous than I was, coz I have left her with Mum before, but not for so long.

And we spent the most delicious hour and a half in bed that I can remember for a very long time! It seemed that time actually stretched out, so that it seemed we were there for hours, which was fantastic. We made love, slowly and passionately, in a way that has just not been possible for us with a small child, even while that child is asleep. She is a pretty light sleeper, so she would either wake up once we got going (even if we were in another room), or we would hear a dog bark or a bird chirp and think it was her waking, or we would have to keep quiet or be quick, and even though it's always nice when you can get some, it's just not the same as laying in bed, just the two of you, and knowing there is nothing else that will call you away, that you can take your time and focus and immerse yourself and just bliss out. Afterward we lay there and talked and laughed like we used to do when we were uni students and would spend literally all day in bed doing just that, day after day. It was SOOOO nice! I mean, we talk and laugh all the time, but it's just different when you're still tingling with the loveliness of having just made love, and all naked and intimate, and your hands are running over each other.

So after a couple of hours we called Mum and she said Indi was fine, but Mat felt he couldn't relax properly so we got dressed and drove over. As it turned out Mum called us when we were just around the corner, saying Indi was happy but getting tired, so it was good that we left when we did. We were so overjoyed to see her, like we had been gone for days. I'm gonna treasure the memory of that time we had though, just the two of us. Mama and papa got to be just Mat and Nalin for a while, and it was good.