Everything Happens at Once in My Family.

It is our 44th wedding anniversary. Yep, right after my birthday - which HE also forgot until it was flashed in his face on our emails. No emails this time but I have written a story for him. As a point of reference - we travelled to New Zealand for our honeymoon, and to start a new life. This isn't true, obviously - the story I mean. But second time around???

Smell the Roses?
Ann sat beside her mother and waited for her to wake from her nap. She noticed how thin her skin had become over these last months. Her hands, speckled with liver spots, looked transparent in the late afternoon sun.
Her mother turned her head and smiled at her, eyes still bleared from her sleep. "Hello dear, I've had such a nice dream. I was back in Rotorua with your father.
"It was a lovely morning, when we set out. The beginning of spring, but still very fresh, as it can be in New Zealand. Oh, it was so peaceful. And green! You haven't seen green grass until you visit the North Island. Australia has nothing to compare with it. We drove up from Auckland in our rented Mini Minor. Sheep were everywhere, and so white. No dust you see, to make them dirty like ours."
There was silence as her mother drew back into her memories, then she spoke again. "There wasn't much traffic, being a week day. Just a few farmers taking stock to market and a beer tanker. I remember the beer tankers because your father told me about the parties they had when one turned over." She smiled, mischievous as a girl.
"We had our windows down and were singing to the radio. Fifties stuff - sweet, silly and sentimental. Not like the stuff you listen to today." She sniffed and Ann smiled, she'd heard that before. "We could smell the town before we saw it. Rotten eggs, I thought. You know the smell naughty boys mix in chemistry class to disrupt a lesson. It was overpowering, like Dante's world, and became more so as we drove closer. Steam hung over the whole area, keeping the smell close to the ground. No tourists were there at such an early hour.
"Your father parked close to the walks and made me get out. He was angry that I was pregnant. Just when we were beginning to get ahead. It was hard to make ends meet in those days."Ann's mother sighed and moved to ease her bones.
"That's where I lost him. One minute he was on the wooden walkway with me, the next - only the bubbling hot mud. He'd wanted me to have a mud bath… Sulphur reminds me of him." She sighed and held Ann's hand as she drifted back into her dream world.
Ann sat and wondered.