When you've dated someone awhile, but can still remember life before the relationship (B.C. in my case), the little anniversaries mean a lot. Cade and I can't agree when we started dating, but we can't argue the significance of Sakura Matsuri, the annual Cherry Blossom Festival at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. We went last year when my camera was a new plaything with all sorts of functions I didn't know how to use, and I guess you could say the same thing about our relationship. We were total rookies, having fought once. We're old pros now. In fact, we've earned Heisman trophies for arguing. I'm the MVP, Most Valuable Pouter.

Cade and I headed to Brooklyn on a few hours' sleep and didn't have to wait too long in the ticket line. Last year, we bypassed the line with a corporate membership. This year, it was different, which is a whole other blog entry. It was early afternoon and the festivities were underway - Japanese dancing, origami workshops, a procession of kimonoed marchers. This year was a tough one for cherry blossoms. They started blooming early, but then it got cold again. Most of the ones we saw had reached their peak some three weeks ago. Now they were stingy with their beauty, tightly flowered and drooping at the edges.



The magnolias and quince blossoms didn't disappoint, though. They were gorgeous. The flowering quince tree was abuzz with bees. Cade and I stood there for awhile watching the hard teardrops of pollen the bees were carrying on their backsides. I'm not sure how they did it. Perhaps their adhesive fuzz? It was quite impressive.


When the cacophonous dancing procession passed the flower beds of tulips and hyacinth, a terrified rabbit went racing for shelter deeper into the garden. Wild animals in the city delight me. Saturday night, Cade was walking crosstown at 3 a.m. and came face-to-face with a raccoon near Central Park South. It was doing what anything in Central Park does in the wee hours - smoking crack and looking for women to assault.

After walking throughout the garden, our fingers were tired from all the photography. Cade appeased me and we went to the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at The Brooklyn Museum. There we saw a naked woman use a barbed wire hula hoop, a padded cell made of maxi pads, and some silhouettes that challenge race relations among women.

Last year, Cade and I left Brooklyn exhausted. We went back to Manhattan and hours later, he whispered that he loved me. Saturday, he didn't have to get the courage up. I didn't have to wait for it. I said it first, but I knew he agreed anyway. It goes without saying.

I think there's no better way than that to celebrate the beginning and enjoy the middle.