The Wedding Day

Today Alberto and I celebrate our second wedding anniversary.  

Our marriage has had its challenges as well as its beautiful moments, but all things considered we make a fabulous team.  

We had a very unusual wedding...  

It is a beautiful, sunshiny day in September.  A wonderful time of year, early autumn, with the breeze beginning to carry the sticky sweet scent of maple leaves, the sun still beaming down preventing the chill of fall.  

The groom stands at the edge of the meadow, a harpist is playing Pachabel’s Canon in D Major.   A gleaming ginger-coated horse enters from stage right, stepping proudly, the bride is side-saddle, her spanish-inspired dress billowing around her ankles.  Her face is flushed with emotion and her eyes are lowered.  She dismounts, walks up the aisle with her father. 

The service is short, and nobody remembers what is said, but for a sense of the words the bride and groom speak, each in the other's language, in promising themselves to one another.  

As the sun sets, the celebration moves to the harbour.  The guests dine, and when the last rays of sun slide slowly out of sight behind the vast expanse of the sea, small white lights illuminate the festivities.  Dancing, laughter, and merriment predominate the setting.  Mouths yawning, eyelids drooping, the bride and groom exit to their private quarters…

I won’t continue from this point, as this is a G-rated blog.  But I WILL share that the night was tremendous, the bride and groom escaped in the middle of the night on a small, barely-sea-worthy vessel, which broke down, alarms sounding in the middle of the ocean.  No that's not a metaphor for copulation gone awry.  It truly happened.  Well, maybe they weren't in the MIDDLE of the ocean, but they were definitely in a deep part.  The bride and groom WERE able to make it to their flight and subsequently to their honeymoon destination in Mexico, where they shared a fabulous vacation.

And that is how our marriage began. Beautiful, memorable, and laden with twists of adventure.  If the rest of our lives together can live up to the beginning, we are sure to share a marvellous journey!  I look forward to spending many years to come with Alberto, un hombre tan hermoso y cariñoso.  I hope to learn from him and about him more every day. 

Once Upon A Time...

My friend Courtenay Bills has inspired me greatly through her blogging to create a blog of my own. Once upon a time there was a boy and a girl who live happily ever after, and I am going to blog about them.   It makes sense to begin at the beginning, so that is exactly where we shall go:

*CAUTION* the story below is from the point of view of the girl of this fable; the boy's version is somewhat skewed by his masculine (distorted) perception of reality.

Once upon a time there was a girl named Carly Ellen.  The girl had just moved back home from an adventure in Honduras and she was very, very lonely.  She missed the charm of latin america: the loud laughter, the invasion of personal space, the long line-ups at the bank that force you to drink

a cold coke and socialize with a total stranger.

So this girl was just returning to her student job as a barn worker at veterinary college.  She was donning the most hideous pair of green coveralls, and was shoveling a big pile of dung out of a stall when she looked up, swept aside her sweaty bangs, and the moon hit her eye like a big pizza-pie.  That's right - it was amore! There stood a handsome mexican man, also in green coveralls, flashing her an impish grin.

She became acquainted with the mexican man and found out that he was a veterinarian who had just begun work at the college.  His name was Jose Alberto.  They began to spend a lot of time together; going for dinner, watching movies, going to parties.  The girl began to like the mexican man very much.  But she felt like maybe he was just indulging her girlish fantasies so she decided to test his devotion and she vowed not to speak to him until he spoke to her first.

Many, many days went by, and as they did, the poor girl felt more and more convinced that the mexican man did not feel as she did; until one day, the mexican man rang her up and asked if she would like to go to Mexico with him. The girl's heart was pounding. The mexican man scoffed, "just joking, I only want you to look after my apartment building while I am in Mexico, and collect my mail."

The girl felt very cross about the way she had been fooled.  So while the mexican man was in Mexico, she wrote him a very strongly worded letter telling him that she thought his behavior was out of line.  She also mustered up the courage to admit that she felt very strongly about him, and that his mean joke had hurt her very much.

He wrote back, apologizing for the way he had made her feel; but also apologizing because he had been too afraid to make a move.  He explained that he had wanted to kiss her very much so many times, but he was fearful that she would think that he was an old smelly veterinarian and she would file a lawsuit against him.  But he was also apologizing because they had missed their opportunity, as he had just got back together with his ex-girlfriend.

The girl Carly Ellen didn't speak to Jose Alberto much after that.  She just couldn't be around him without crying or trying to win his love; so she decided that not being around him was the better option.

Months later, she found out that the mexican man and his ex-girlfriend had broken up again.  Hmm.  She still didn't speak to him because she didn't want to look desperate.

She began to date this other guy... a doctor guy...  He was handsome, athletic, charming, very polite, etc. etc.  blah blah.  On the day of a big date with the doctor guy, Carly Ellen worked a shift in the barn and the mexican man was there.  He stepped on her hose while she was spraying down an alleyway, and it made her heart pound.  Then he described his halloween costume to her, and she hung off of every word like it was love poetry.

That night, the doctor she had begun to date looked very boringly handsome in an expensive suit.  His athletic muscles embraced her in a lifeless hug.  He charmed her with his perfectly aligned pearly white generic smile.  And he was mundanely polite as he opened doors for her and kindly pulled out her chair.  When he kissed her goodnight, it was like kissing a dead fish.

So the girl went home and began talking to her roommates.  They asked her, "how was your date with the doctor?!?!"  And she responded by comparing her humdrum doctor to the passion of the mexican man.  Her roommates said "you have some thinking to do."  And the girl knew that what they said was true.

So the girl told the mexican man how she felt.  And she was very prepared for him to tell her to go take a hike.  She anticipated that he would say, "you are very pretty, Carlita, and very nice, but..." and

explain why it would never work.  But to her surprise, when she told the mexican man, he said, "me too."  And he kissed her.  And it was NOT like kissing a dead fish.  No, it was not even like kissing a LIVE fish.  Not at all.  His hug was the heartfelt embrace of a best friend.  His touch sent shivers down her spine, and his kiss sent fireworks exploding in her heart.

The End.  Well, actually, that was The Beginning.