We Are Thirty-Nine

One can hardly fathom, where the time goes, but Cuppa and I are thirty-nine today. Just as it was all those years ago, it was the rainy Saturday of our May long weekend. Of course, at the time one barely noticed in the hubbub of a wedding, reception and getaway.

We were married in Toronto and spent our one official honeymoon night (yes, one whole night!) in Stratford where I had proposed a year earlier in the Shakespeare Country Garden after we had seen Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream: not that the play had spurred my proposal, for I had pretty well decided on the timing, and the garden seemed a romantic spot.

My heart was pounding, but I'm not sure why. It wasn't as though marrying this girl frightened me in any way or that I expected her to refuse. Nevertheless, it's a once in a lifetime occurrence, and one wants it to go well. Poor Cuppa thought that I was about to tell her that I had decided to leave her for a year or longer whilst I ventured to New Zealand. I had distant relatives there, and they had sent calendars and photo magazines over the years, and I had always thought that it would be a wonderful place to visit, long before Lord of the Rings may have increased its popularity as a destination. I still do think that it would be a grand place to experience, but I have no real hopes of ever getting there, and that's okay too. Some dreams pass or at least seem less important as time creeps forward.

In an poor and awkward segue, I do want to connect the old part of our story to a more recent one by referring to another trip, our holiday to the west coast last year around this time. We were walking around English Bay in Vancouver when I began to consider which of our vacations had been the greatest highlight. Was it The Rockies, The East Coast, Arizona? Cuppa was somewhat in front of me at the time, and I recall realizing that it was not a vacation that was the highlight of my life but that the wife of my youth and middle age and dawning old age was .... and is.