The Anniversary Booking: Ten Years of Wednesdays

Ten years ago today, a man in a tweed jacket knocked on my door in Sandy Bay, handed me an envelope, and said, "I'm terribly sorry, I've never done this before." I said, "That's all right, neither have I, not with you." He laughed, and that was the beginning.

He has booked me on the first Wednesday of every month since. One hundred and twenty Wednesdays, give or take a few holidays and one broken ankle (mine, a ski trip). I have watched him go grey at the temples. He has watched me change my hair six times and, he claims, approved of five.

What he knows and doesn't know

He knows my working name, which is not my real one. He knows I grow tomatoes and fail at it every year because Hobart summers are too short. He knows I love the Salamanca market in winter, when it's just the locals and the fudge stall.

He doesn't know where I live, what my family is like, or what I do on the other twenty-nine days of the month. That's by design, and he has never once pressed. The respect in that has always moved me. Some of the best relationships in my working life are made of exactly this: clear edges and full hearts within them.

Today

He brought a small cake from the bakery on Elizabeth Street with a single candle, and a card that said "Ten years of being the best part of the month." I had bought him a bottle of the pinot from the vineyard in the Coal River Valley that he mentioned in passing, seven years ago, and has never stopped talking about.

We ate the cake first, with the plates balanced on our knees. We talked about his granddaughter's first year at school, and his plan to finally walk the Overland Track before his knees give out. The rest of our time was what it always is: tender, familiar, unhurried, and nobody's business but ours.

Tonight

I'm writing this by the heater, with the wind coming off the Derwent and rattling the windows. It's strange to love something that has such firm edges. But I do. Not in the way people imagine when they hear that word. It's more like the way you love a particular walk, or a season, or a song that has been there through a lot.

Ten years. Same time next month.