Nine and a Half Days

I’ve gotten a lot of feedback, and milage, out of my previous post about swearing, which gave rise to more than a few interesting discussions. Suffice it to say that people have differing views on, and tolerances for listening to or participating in, swearing. And I remain convinced, as far as swearing goes, I have yet to meet my match.

By a strange coincidence, I ran across this YouTube Short in my feed a day or two after I posted that blog. It’s quite funny, but I warn you, if you have any sensitivity to swearing, give it a miss, and if you are at work or attending a church supper, wait for a more opportune time to press PLAY.

With that out of the way, we can address what I came here to talk about: Meeting and marrying the woman of my dreams.

It was an off-handed comment I made at the end of the previous blog that surprised, not only me, but my wife as well: nine days. After meeting in August 2001, we were in each other’s company only nine days (which I can reasonably adjust to 9 ½ Days for the benefit of anyone who gets the reference) before we decided to marry, and this can be truncated further to five and a half if you take into account that we didn’t talk to each other much for the first half of the week. Even if you account for none-proximity time, it was just two months, and then another four months (encompassing only 34 days of proximity-time) before the ceremony.

In the twenty-odd years since those heady weeks, the day-to-day of married life has relegated that startling fact into an interesting curiosity, until I made note if it, which somehow made it stark, surprising, and more than a little insane.

Not so much for me, I had form. Inadvisable life choices and impulsive acts were not unknown to me, but my wife was—and remains—a cautious woman, not given to reckless behaviour. And that’s what is so surprising: we met, we decided to marry, I moved to the UK, and not once did either of us have a doubt that we were doing the right thing. In looking back, we find that quite remarkable, especially when our first meeting was not altogether auspicious. (If you have not read the book, I recommend you do.)

A good friend of mine, who knew me well enough to suspect I was making a horrible mistake, desperately threw every unattached female friend she could find at me in the few weeks I was in the US before moving to the UK. I’m glad she did, because it proved I was making the right choice. I told each of the women what I was doing, and they were all, “Oh my God! That’s so romantic! You have to do it!” To which my friend responded, “You’re supposed to be talking him out of it.”

I was not to be dissuaded. I knew it to be a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence, one that does not happen to everyone, which made me determined to grab it and hold on.

God knows the universe kicks you in the butt every chance it gets, so when the stars align and something special rolls by, you are fortunate indeed. And if you have the courage to embrace it, you are more fortunate still. My wife and I somehow knew we were onto something special and never looked back, and—after arriving in Britain—I spent more than a few months wandering about in a haze of utter amazement and disbelief.

That feeling, naturally, dissipated over the years to the point where, if a close friend or relative told us they were planning to undertake a similar venture, we would zip-tie their hands, duct-tape them to a chair and blast Country and Western music* at them until they snapped out of it. I mean, doing something like that would be insane, right?

And yet, even after all this time, something occasionally happens (like the previous post) that brings the fairytale feeling back, reminding me how privileged I am, and causing a wave of giddy gratitude to engulf me.

Pleasant though it be, it will soon pass, the giddiness, that is, not the gratitude.

_{*Unless they were a C&W fan, in which case we’d blast them with Beyoncé.}