Jun
27

Something Old, Something New.

I’m getting married.

Next May—the 5th of May, probably. (And if any of you remind me about Cinco De Mayo and suggest we have a Mexican themed wedding with piñatas and aiyiyiyiyiyi! I will cut you. My mother and I have already had this discussion, and the answer is STILL NO.)

Sorry to have kept you all in suspense about the Big! News! And now, of course, you are probably disappointed as it isn’t really all that big—it is more, to borrow Sar’s phrasing—a Thing Of Interest. To me, though, it is Big! News! because, like Rhett Butler, I am not the marrying kind. As a youth, I assumed that if I got married at all, I would eventually divorce. At first this was because I didn’t think very highly of men (see exhibit A, my father) and later it was because I had been sufficiently heartbroken to believe that if I did marry, sooner or later it was bound to end badly. Finally, in my early twenties, I discovered I loved living alone and hated dating, and relationships dropped even more precipitously on my list of priorities.

Then I met the Nearly, and (though he later told me that he knew instantly that I was the person he would be with for the rest of his life), three weeks later we declared that this was “It,” that we were hanging up our dating hats for good. We rented our first apartment together two months later. It was fast, but lovely.
In the early days, pre-cohabitation, there was a lot of urgent forward motion in our relationship—we couldn’t wait to move in together (we broke our leases to do it, at great expense), get married, etc. Once we were living together, however, we had a lot of conversations like this:

Nearly or Alexa: Nosy Relative asked why we aren’t married yet.
Alexa or Nearly: Why aren’t we?
Nearly or Alexa: I don’t know. We practically are.
Alexa or Nearly: Do you want to get married now?
Nearly or Alexa: Do YOU want to get married now?
Alexa or Nearly: {Shrugs. Changes television channel.}
Nearly or Alexa: Yeah. I mean, we will eventually.
Alexa or Nearly: Are you hungry?

Once we had moved in together marriage seemed somehow…beside the point. It wouldn’t really change our daily lives, after all. It wasn’t that we were against the idea, just that other things kept cropping up:

• First, we thought I had cervical cancer, which threw us into family planning, as we both dearly wanted children and were wondering whether it might be “now or never.”
• Then I had a miscarriage.
• And finally, we discovered that carrying a pregnancy to term was the least of my problems—Surprise! You’re infertile!.

So, we became embroiled in some fairly serious things early on.
The past two years of our relationship have all but revolved around my Lady Parts, with the result that we had what is so charmingly termed a “rough patch” last January.
At my behest, we will be postponing further reproductive experiments (all of which, from this point on, will involve needles—more on that later) until after the wedding. The reason for this is simple: the whole point of a wedding is to have some sort of champagne fountain, and I will tear off my own ears before I sit drinking apple juice whilst my guests enjoy Veuve Clicquot.

When the Nearly turned to me two weeks ago and asked if I would marry him in the spring, I surprised myself by how happy I was. As a young girl, I didn’t while away the hours imagining my wedding day. I have never opened a Bride magazine. Veils appeal to me only because they would hide my face.
It took me a while to figure out why I feel almost drunk with freedom at the prospect of marriage, and I finally realized it is because it seems–for some unknown reason–as if it gives us a chance to go back in time. I feel, to be quite honest, five years younger at the prospect of doing all of the things the Nearly and I missed. It is unclear to me what exactly those things are, but I have a picture in my mind of me with painted toenails and shiny hair, working on my book of essays, going out to dinner with the Nearly, trying to catch a painty-pawed cat as she streaks across our newly refinished floors. I can concentrate on selfish things, like losing a bit of weight and planning a honeymoon. We can have time as a relatively-carefree young couple, time that we willingly gave up, not realizing how much we would miss it. And next May we can stand somewhere with a wee group of family and friends and start fresh.
And there will be some sort of champagne fountain.

By Alexa | Posted in Ceci N'est Pas Une Ecrivaine |