June 1, in retrospect

It’s time for another In Retrospect post, a “remember-what-we-were-doing-then” type of thing that serves to remind us of where we’ve been, and how far we’ve come (or gone, as the case may be). We’ve traveled far in the past ten or eleven years – in retrospect:

Taken June 1, 1999. We’d made our way out to Rouge et Noir, on the Marin coast. We loved to visit them because of their wonderful cheese factory, where, if you were lucky, you could watch them making Brie and Camembert. The factory had been around since 1865, out there in the wilds of Marin. Sometimes we’d visit just to sit on the benches and look at the ducks, other times we’d buy some cheese and a loaf of bread, and carry away the makings of our picnic further up along the coast.

4 years later, June 1, 2003, found us at the University of San Francisco to pick up D’s graduation gown. We took the opportunity of the emptiness of the cathedral to stop and take a few pictures. There’s a certain loveliness to this vast old space, isn’t there? D. didn’t have a tripod back then. Or, at least, he wasn’t dragging it everywhere as he does now. *Ahem.*

D. had finished his first Master’s degree (or would within the month), and we were so relieved to have the long slog be over. If only we’d known! Although he did apply to a few programs before and after graduating from USF, it was to take us another four years to finally get D. back into school, and this time to stay on for the PhD!

Another 4 years go by, to find us at June 1, 2007. We woke up early to take pictures of the sunrise and to get to the garden well before the blasting heat of June in California. T.’s little succulent, rescued from a “refrigerator pot” (some idiot had decided that a plant would look good stuck to a refrigerator, so glued it into a pot – yes, glued, soil and all) had sent up its first wee flower. We’d never seen it flower, and didn’t really know when we would again: D. had applied to Glasgow, and we were waiting to see whether anything would come of it.

Just a year later found us moving into our second flat, here in Glasgow. D. had already committed to doing the PhD, and we moved into what we hoped would be a better flat. Regular readers well know it didn’t turn out that way, but we loved it anyway, if only for its stained-glass windows. The neighbor with the six food speakers, the boiler troubles that left us without central heating or hot water for three months, the darkness … well, how could we have known?

And, finally, June 1 last year found us in the Dolomite Mountains of Italy, taking a tram up the side of the mountain near Bolzano to eat … well, food which was more Austrian than Italian. It was a wonderfully stormy trip, with lots of rain and wild wind, yet not too chilly, either. The sky above the Dolomites was nearly as dramatic as that above Glasgow, and we truly enjoyed the trip, for all that it was a strange place to people unfamiliar with Northern Italy. In the old stone castles, in the sun-drenched town squares, over cups of thick hot chocolate and overlooking miles of vineyards, it was blessedly peaceful: the perfect antidote for deadlines and hurry.

Who knows what we’ll do today? Happy June.