Bill and I recently celebrated our wedding anniversary, which I have an abysmal track record of remembering. It’s not because I do not love my husband: it’s because I have a terrible memory for dates. Just ask my daughter — on more than one piece of school paperwork, I got her birthday wrong.

Bill and I tend to celebrate our anniversary in a low-key way. Not because I do not feel like celebrating my wedding anniversary in a big way. As matter of fact, I feel like I should send up fireworks every year in celebration. Not because that I am surprised that we’re still married — well, maybe a little — but because we still have so much fun.

And in the spirit of fun, we decided to recreate an early date: dinner and a movie. Specifically, a movie at the Wilton Town Hall Theatre.

Bill and I spent an enormous amount of time at the Wilton Town Hall Theatre when we were dating and probably nearly as much there when we first married. We both love movies, and that theatre was one where you could find the movies that were a bit off the beaten path. Foreign films. Re-releases of restored classics. I saw most of the animation festival films there. We spent one date figuring out which pictures we had seen there, because we thought that the odds were pretty good that we had, unknowingly, been at some of the same films at the same time.

We’ve never lost our love for film, but once we became parents, we tended not to go out as much, and if we went to the movies, it was usually to a nearby cinema.

So the plan was to go to the 4:30 p.m. showing at the Wilton and then out to dinner. Just like the old days.

We decided to see Parasite, at my request. It’s a movie that’s gotten a lot of critical acclaim, and all the reviews just hinted at a strange ending. That was fine.

So we drove out to the theatre on a Sunday in the freezing cold. We were early and so the only customers for a bit between shows, and when the proprietor asked where we were from, I told him Nashua, but that we were old-time patrons. That we were celebrating our anniversary at the place where it began. He congratulated us and we talked about his history with the State and Union Theatres on Main Street in Nashua. Once we got our tickets, we ordered popcorn. The Wilton makes fresh popcorn with real melted butter for every showing, and I love it, partially because I can get a non-soda drink along with my popcorn. The Wilton stocks tons of flavored ‘fizzy water’ and I get whatever I am craving. We got a giant tub of popcorn to share and settled in to enjoy the previews.

The movie started. In Korean, with subtitles. Once again, like old times. We happily dug into our popcorn and watched the film unfold. It’s the story of a Korean family that has become impoverished by changes in the economy and their inability to find work. When one of the son’s friends offers him an opportunity to fill in for him as the English tutor to the daughter of a wealthy family, their fortunes start to improve. And then one night, through a chain of odd circumstances, everything begins to unravel.

The movie was quite funny, but there’s a lot of social commentary about income disparity embedded in there. The humor started to get overtaken by the issues. Bill got us more popcorn, which I think we ate because of anxiety when things began to unravel. There’s a shocking ending, which I wouldn’t hint at even if I could, because it’s so unbelievable.

We left the movie talking about it, which felt good. But when we thought about dinner, and we both felt too full of popcorn to even consider eating more of anything. We’ll save that another evening.

After all, 29 years is quite a long time. It deserves a little more than a little celebration.

Happy anniversary, darling.

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