I know I was wrong, it just seemed to get away from me, and I was too embarrassed to correct it. I thought maybe if I didn't send any thank yous, people would assume I already had. Forgive my asinine rudeness.
As my 20th anniversary approaches, (we're at 18). I plan to rectify that mistake, I even plan to chronicle it in blog posts to come. Consider this the first in the series.
We definitely didn't have an exotic honeymoon. We weren't even going to take one at all. Josh and I got married at 20 and 19 respectively. We were both living at home with our parents, but we had put a down payment on a house the April before our wedding, and were figuring out mortgage payments, saving to replace carpet, stripping paint from kitchen cabinets, and with our plan to avoid debt, there looked like no possible way for us to miss our paychecks for a week, let alone spring for a tropical beach.
When my grandmother heard we weren't planning on taking a honeymoon, she came to me and said, "Angela, how much do you and Josh make in a week?" I told her, and she explained that as a wedding present, she would pay Josh and I what we would have made, if we agreed to take the week after our wedding off, and spend it in our family cabin. I started to argue, and she said, "Either way you're going to have to pay for groceries for the week, you might as well spend some time alone together." I was touched and we took her up on her offer.
I should explain that our family "cabin" was really an ancient single wide trailer, on a lot with other trailers and cabins just off the highway in the mountains. My grandparents, people who lived simply their entire lives, saved for this little "place" in the woods. There was a large deck all the way around it, covered with hummingbird feeders, and sparkling and iridescent garden decor. My grandmother had decorated the inside and kept it immaculate. In the back was a bedroom large enough for a double bed, the next room was a tiny bathroom, then kitchen, then living room. The entire thing was probably 25 feet long by 8 feet wide. My family and I loved going there growing up, and the prospect of any vacation sounded amazing to Josh and me.
That week we marveled at the humming birds coming to eat from my grandmother's feeders. We read Silence of the Lambs aloud to each other, naked in bed. We watched The English Patient, and dined on extravagant dinners of Kraft Deluxe Mac n Cheese. We draink Ice Reisling wine my mom had given us to toast our marriage, because we weren't old enough to pick out or purchase our own alcohol, and Josh held my hair as I threw up that wine and Mac n Cheese. I screamed at the frogs that came up through the pipes in the toilet and bathtub, and Josh laughed at me. We made love on picnic blankets in the woods. It was a glorious, glorious honeymoon. I wouldn't change one single thing about it. We hardly left that cabin all week.
We didn't need an exotic locale, or tropical beaches, or fancy drinks with umbrellas, we needed the pure, unadulterated bliss of being alone together, drinking each other in, celebrating this life we were about to embark on, and getting to know each other in ways we never thought possible.
We needed to look deeply into each other's eyes, we needed to be together without distractions.
I'm so grateful, that instead of the beauty of some place, I was gifted with the beauty of my husband. I was gifted with the magic of what we can be together, and when our marriage is hard, and I'm struggling, I go back to that week, and it helps me hold on.
Thank you Grandma Leola for our gift.
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