Timberley and I celebrated our twentieth anniversary earlier this year. We were married January 7. But January is a horrible time to travel, unless you are going to Patagonia or Tasmania, so we waited until now to make our trip. (That and we thought we would wait on our trip until Sam had left home for college. That part didn’t quite pan out. We get to enjoy Sam for one more year!)
We had known for some time that we wanted to go to Italy together. We had been several times in the past and had thought it would be a very romantic place to spend an anniversary. It was. We stayed in Florence and a few days in Siena. Everything about the trip was wonderful.
One day as were walking through Florence, we were faced with the artwork from the Medici family. I think we were perhaps seeing a statue of Lorenzo Medici (Lorenzo the Magnificent). My thoughts went to Anna and her love of the Renaissance. Then I remembered the names of all her children that she planned on having. (Without having a husband, but that was another story.) It seemed that all of her names were Italian or pseudo-Italian. Salvio and the like.
As we walked through the street that day, I said to Timberley, “Anna would have loved Italy.” “I know,” she replied. “She would loved everything about this.” I thought for a moment and said, “But I guess that where she is now, she would probably think that Italy was not much to see.” Timberley said that it is easy for us to lose our focus and proper perspective on things. We can only see what we see. We don’t see what Anna sees. We have our experiences here, and we can only focus on missing Anna. We make the assumption that Anna is missing what we are experiencing without her. But the situation is really reversed, isn’t it. We are missing what she is experiencing.
Anna Resurget 
First Happy Anniversary to two wonderful people Todd and Timberley. I enjoyed reading your story about Anna and your romantic vacation in Italy. Todd you have a gift in conveying love for your family in all your stories. I’m so glad you are a man of God and our teacher. Welcome home.
Thank you, Lilly. I appreciate you very much.
[…] I have two things to share this year. The first will be brief. The second is more important. First, Timberley and I went to see Michael Fabiano last night give a recital in Raleigh. He is a fantastic singer. If you love opera, you need to hear him when you get a chance. He performs with opera companies around the world so he will likely be coming to some place near you. If you do not love opera, what are you waiting for? What does this have to do with Anna? I am pretty certain that she would have loved the recital last night. But I am absolutely certain that had she gone to the recital, she would have decided to have 18 children instead of 17 and that her 18th child would have been named Fabiano. You can read a bit about her children here. […]