John and I celebrated our first wedding anniversary on Monday. (Pictures of the wedding can be found in the photos section.) To celebrate, we spent the day at Disneyland, including dinner at the Blue Bayou.

When we came home, we followed tradition and ate the top of our wedding cake. Which tasted like cardboard. So, we had about two bites each and threw the rest away.

What a weird tradition. And kind of gross, really.

Tomorrow is the anniversary of my grandfather's death. He died while I was in Florida on my honeymoon.

I remember sitting in the MGM Studios park, eating lunch in the section that looks like Hollywood in the 40's. There are fake ads around for Kodak film that are supposed to look "vintage". So they're paintings. Somehow Norman Rockwell type paintings were supposed to sell film. Anyway, by the time we were leaving Florida, the big story was that Kodak was laying off about 15,000 people. Because they were going to go digital.

And my grandfather was dead, I found out, just before the fireworks started on our night in the Magic Kingdom. Will they advertise digital photography with strange, nostalgic images of film cans and people with jobs?

When I sat there by palm trees and stucco, with the sounds of Glen Miller being piped out of rock-shaped speakers, I pictured my grandfather working in his in LA or standing in his WWII Coast Guard Uniform on the beach somewhere in Hawaii...somewhere where there are green plants with large, broad leaves. He's still, watching the water, but tapping his foot to some new big band song.

He was already dead when I was thinking that, but I didn't know until the following night.

Labels: disney., family., John.

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