Someone Special

Sophistique Noir's theme this month is "someone special." It may be obvious, but I find it impossible to blog about anyone other than my beloved, my husband Thomas, for he is most special to me. I have dear, dear friends, & even our two cats are super-special, but Thomas is my best friend, my partner, my soulmate.

We've been together 20 years, married 12, we've had great ups & downs, we don't agree on everything, & we are constantly working on our relationship. But we care deeply about each other, & neither of us could imagine life without the other.

I always come back to these words I included in our wedding ceremony, paraphrased from the poet Rainer Maria Rilke:

A merging of two people is an impossibility, and where it seems to exist, it is a hemming-in, a mutual consent that robs one party or both parties of their fullest freedom and development. But once the realization is accepted that even between the closest people infinite distances exist, a marvelous living side-by-side can grow up for them, if they succeed in loving the expanse between them, which gives them the possibility of always seeing each other as a whole and before an immense sky.

That is, I believe, what we have. We are two unique wholes, different, separate, but sharing our lives completely & utterly together. That makes our relationship so terribly special to me.

And here we are at our wedding in 2000. We designed our outfits in a Victorian-gothic style & made them with the help of friends & family. They were taken by Erica Z. Connors, our professional photographer.

And then here we are doing what we love most -- travel. I'd only been to Canada before meeting Thomas, but together we have set foot on every continent including Antarctica. We're always planning another trip, whether to somewhere new or back to an old favorite haunt. And sometimes we combine my love of costume, our interest in history, & our passion for travel.

At a 16th-century manor house in England, 2010.

In New Zealand with the Remarkables mountains in the backgound, 2004.

In Florence, Italy, 2007.

At the Pergamon in Berlin, Germany, 2005.

At a cafe on Piazza San Marco in Venice, Italy, during Carnevale, 2009.