|
I don't know how it happened. 17 years ago today I was nursing a pretty ravaged heart, after a tricky break up from a long term relationship. It was 1999 and I was facing the new millennium with something other than optimism.
Though I was lucky enough to have some really brilliant friends to bolster me along, the future looked...uhm...lonely. I've never had a problem with being on my own - especially considering the alternative I'd escaped from - but there was a finality to it all, that felt like some great immovable sadness.
It was like one door had closed and I couldn't be bothered to open the next one.
12 months later, I was engaged to be married to a guy I'd randomly met in a pub in London, after a particularly feisty stand up gig.
My bestie, Rachel, who was similarly nursing a ravaged heart, had been at the gig too.
We've known each other since we were 2: We were at preschool together. Primary (or elementary for you Americans) High School and then even Drama School. We'd shared an apartment in Glasgow for a while and now, both of us single, were sharing an house in London.
Both of us hadn't wanted to go out that night, but I had to work. We agreed that we'd just go to the gig and I'd do the set and then we'd head back home. But when we arrived, the gig was pretty "lively" and though I had a lot of fun, when I came off stage after the event, I discovered that another act who'd had not quite so much fun, had been complaining to the management that I had willfully succeeded in embarrassing her. I still to this day have no idea where her head was, but I guess that sometimes hurt needs a target.
Anyway, the point is, by then Rachel and I knew that going back home wasn't going to happen as all it would result in was some continual conversational dissection as to why some people can be surprisingly weird, so we retreated to a nearby pub along with some of the, similarly bemused, comedy staff in tow.
The pub was busy and sweaty and really loud. Yet, while I ordered drinks, Rachel still managed somehow to hear the lilt of a Scottish accent over the sea of Cockney. By the time I turned round with drinks she was in conversation with a tall guy in a leather jacket. His friends moved along to make space for me to sit down and that is how I ended up sitting next to a gingery guy, called Mark.
He asked my name. I told him. He asked what I did, and because I wasn't in the mood to talk, I told him I was a dentist. ( In my past experience, a very successful conversation killer - no offense to dentists.)
Within the year we were engaged. The year after that, on December 28th, we got married.
We were planning to have a big daft three day wedding in France during the Summer. (We'd decided against a conventional Scottish Church wedding, as at that time, gay marriage wasn't legal in the UK at the time, and though Mark and I are a straight down the line heterosexual couple, some of our friends were in long term gay relationships and it felt hypocritical to celebrate our love in a situation that didn't recognize theirs too.)
But to legally get married in France was a big hassle, so we decided to get legally wed in Dunoon, Scotland between Christmas and New Year as we'd be up there visiting parents anyway.
There were 24 people in the wedding party, including us. It snowed. It was bitterly cold and the sea was icy blue.
Mark wore a kilt. I had a sheepskin coat. Our close family was there, wrapped up in coats and scarves.
The Registrar who married us was lovely. And after the wedding we retreated to the local hotel where all 24 of us had the wedding reception in their function suite which boasted sea views and could seat 250.
It was hilarious. One single table decorated with pink balloons and flowers, in the middle of the huge room. The serving staff weren't sure whether to admire us or feel sorry for us.
But we laughed, ate, sang, did the worst karaoke and laughed some more, in the big echoing empty room.
Though we did indeed have the big wedding in France during the Summer, the little legal wedding for me, sums our marriage up. Often in the middle of great ceremony, we're somewhere in the middle on our own random little island.
2001. Two years after I'd figured all the doors were closed, I found myself married to the man I now couldn't live without.
And 15 years on after the daft, beautiful, wonderful little wedding, I find myself wondering where the time went.
My parents, who laughed and sang at our wedding, have now gone.
And my two sons, who are so much part of everything, were not here yet.
Good things have happened, and bad. We have laughed and cried, agreed and fought. There have been moments of pure joy and moments where I've paced the floor, worrying about what to do next.
There have been times of great change - some planned and others not - and illness, and panic, and rest and relief, and surprise, and ease, and just when it seems that life is predictable, it's suddenly not.
I am glad for the set of circumstance that lead me to the bar that night. I'm glad that Rachel can hear a Scottish accent amidst any amount of noise from any distance, and I'm glad that when I told Mark that night I was a dentist, he didn't mind at all.
In life we often think we are characters who lead the story, but then we we look at the narrative, we see that the story gets on with happening whether we decided it should or not.
You may be the kind of person who thinks you've nothing really to tell, but when you start working on it, you'll find your story has been completely ignoring what you think of yourself, and has been rolling along quite spectacularly without you.
I'm starting back teaching class in Burbank in January. Sign up if it's time - even you, Dentists.
Peace and love,
Lynn
xox
|
