Cementing at Leisure

Mostly gone, but not forgotten.

Today is B.A.'s and my wedding anniversary, so marriage stuff is going to follow. You have been warned. If you're feeling cranky, remember that I was 38 when I married B.A., and that we are the only married people in our Sunday Lunch set, and that therefore we are occasionally the butt of the jokes of guffawing Singles. And we did not get invited to that totally cool New Year's Eve party because we were married.

Okay, I do understand that it was a party for everyone who was separated from their Significant Other on New Year's Eve, but it was a totally cool party, and a lot of our friends were there, and I am still mad, five months, nine days later. Next year WE shall have a New Year's Eve party, just to make sure we are AT one.

But to return to May 9, it is amusing to think now how obsessive I was about getting the wedding "right." I was like Cher in Moonstruck, trying to avoid a second run of bad luck. The wedding HAD to be in the same church my parents got married in. My mother HAD to make my wedding dress. My groom HAD to wear a kilt. The wedding HAD to be incredibly tasteful, modest and quiet because I had been married before and therefore HAD to be humble to the point of invisible. The priest HAD to be one of my own friends. The liturgy HAD to be the best possible version of the Novus Ordo. The food HAD to be the height of Anglo-Saxon 1950s chic, which meant elegant little sandwiches and cake. The reception HAD to take into consideration the feelings of Single guests with no boyfriends. (In hindsight, not allowing any boyfriends was a tad draconian.)

It was a beautiful wedding, and I will exult over my dress and the beautiful cake my mum made until the day I die, but it lacked the exuberance I assume our fifth anniversary party will have (next year), for I will no longer HAVE to prove  that marrying a guy who proposed ten days after meeting me was not a crazy, outrageous, unstable thing to do.

One of my biggest fears as a blogger is that you're all going to marry some guy who proposed after ten  days because I did. Twice now I have fielded emails from girls writing, "I think you'll understand because," and both times I thought "AUGHHHHHHH!"

 I cannot stress enough the following details:

1. I met B.A. in person when I was 37. He was 36.

2. I had spent years finding and writing about the goodness of Single Life.

3. B.A. had spent years thinking and praying over a decision to become a Catholic, and this was never more intense than in the nine months before I met him in person.

4. B.A. was not a complete stranger. He was the friend of friends, and for months before we met, he read my blog and chatted in the combox. He also read manuscript chapters of Ceremony of Innocence, to de-Canadianize the language of the Scottish heroine. (My ex-boyfriend Volker corrected the German.)

5. I was fed up with my hometown, to which I had crept after spectacularly falling ill in Boston, and wanted a radical change.

6. B.A.'s hometown of Edinburgh appeared to my dazed, jet-lagged eyes as an earthly paradise. The city was beautiful. The Historic House (his home and workplace) was beautiful. B.A.'s job was super-cool. His friends were friendly. His liturgy was beautiful. And B.A. was super-nice and also funny. I don't remember if he made puns every five minutes, but if he did I must have found them hilarious.

7. Everybody loves B.A., and the whole first week I was around, all his friends and acquaintances  seemed to hint we were perfect for each other and should get married. It was intense.

8. Meanwhile, we fell for each other with such intensity that we thought it was DIVINELY INSPIRED! Actually, I still think it was divinely inspired. I just don't think it in capital letters.

9. I knew my family and friends back home would love him. And of course they did. B.A. is a kindly, funny, intensely good-natured man. If he weren't so relaxed, he would have made a great diplomat.

10. My mother-in-law is also incredibly relaxed, and instead of engaging in any kind of emotional/social/familial tug-of-war, occasionally sends a text or a cheque from the town she refuses to leave, even for a visit. (I have never met my father-in-law, as he has not been on the scene for yonks.)

11. B.A. is never boring, and yet he is never bad. When you girls complain about NCBs being rather dull, and bad boys being exciting, I know exactly what you mean. However, some men can be endlessly interesting without being bad, and those are the kind of men I hope you will meet.

12. We lived on two different continents, and the only legal way I could stay on this one was to marry B.A. So I did, ASAP.

It could have been a disaster, I suppose, but we have the very great fortune to be very well-suited to each other and had the luck, maturity and wit to recognize that within two weeks, surrounded by other people who recognized this, too.  And so, instead of "married in haste, repenting at leisure"--a very good proverb to remember--we have a case of "married with speed, cementing [our sense of having got a Good Thing] at leisure." We didn't go nuts, but we didn't settle, either.