'Til Death Do Us Part

Sexiness wears thin after a while and beauty fades, but to be married to a man who makes you laugh every day, ah, now that’s a real treat.

-          Joanne Woodward.

His Nibs and I had our wedding anniversary yesterday.  Our anniversary is always a happy day in this house, because we both take the day off work every year.  His Nibs takes the day off because I ask him to, and I take it off so that we can spend the day together and go out for a nice lunch, and so I can hit him with random memory tests of our wedding day and drive him mad.

Yesterday was a beautiful day.  We went out for a nice lunch, and sat outside to eat.  I had pasta, he had a steak sandwich.  The food is irrelevant to the story, but if I was reading this for the first time, the only thing I’d be thinking for the rest of this story is “I wonder what they had for their lunch?”  Especially if I was hungry while reading it.

Anyway, all was going well, we were happy and relaxed until I hit him with “What’s your strongest memory of our wedding day?”

I could see the hunted look come into his eyes immediately.  I knew he was thinking too fast and would give the wrong answer.

“It started raining in the afternoon.  That was great, because we didn’t have to spend hours taking photographs.  So we got to spend the time with our friends in the bar.”

“That’s your strongest memory of our wedding day?  The weather?”

He was no longer hunted looking.  He sat back in his chair and smiled.

“I remember we nearly had a row in the car on the way to the hotel, when you found out that I hadn’t written my speech.”

This is a true story.  We left the church, got into the car, and went off to take the photographs. (This was before the rain started).  And as we finished waving at our guests and drove away, His Nibs turned to me and said

“You wouldn’t have a pen, love, would you?”

“No, I don’t bring a pen to our wedding.  Why would I?  And more to the point, where would I put it?  What do you want a pen for, anyway?”

“I thought I might write my speech.”

There was a long pause.  Not the sort of pause you’re supposed to have within an hour of getting married, where you stare at each other, smiling like idiots, and words aren’t necessary.  This was very much the other sort of pause.  The unhappy sort.

“You didn't write a speech?”

“No.  I didn’t get around to it.”

“You’ve known this wedding is happening on this date for thirteen months, and you never got around to putting your speech together?”

“Well I wasn’t going to write it thirteen months ago, was I?”

“Love, seriously, have you even a first draft of a speech?”

“No.”

His Nibs didn’t look remotely frightened or shaken by my thunderous face.  Nor did he look remotely worried.  He informed me that sure, if he didn’t have a speech, what harm?  He’d do it off the cuff.

I was horrified.  I’ve never known His Nibs to make a public speech, and his making his speech completely off the top of his head was not part of our wedding plan.  But I took a deep breath and let it go.  It gave me something to worry about later.  I think that my letting that go may have set the scene for our future as a married couple.

He gave an off the cuff speech.  I was frantically writing the names of people he had to thank on a serviette and passing them to him.  He didn’t need my help though.  He gave the loveliest speech I’ve ever heard, full of love for everyone, and full of happiness.  I’ve never been prouder of him.

But when quizzed yesterday, this was not his first memory of our wedding day.  The weather was. So I continued to torment him.

Could he name any songs that were played at the reception?

What did we have for our dinner?

Did I make a speech? Did my Dad?  Could he remember anything about either?

Poor His Nibs.  Sitting there, trying to remember minute details of a day fourteen years ago, which he probably hadn’t even noticed at the time.

The difficulty His Nibs faces is that I remember the tiny details of everything.  I can’t remember what I walk up the stairs for, but I remember exactly what song was playing in the nightclub the first time His Nibs asked me to dance, twenty five years ago.  When I find a receipt in the bottom of an old handbag I say annoying things to him like “Oh look, it’s the receipt for the coffee, remember the day we went to Kilkenny and I bought deodorant and you bought socks, remember?”  I’m sure this drives him bonkers. But he smiles and nods, which is enough to keep me happy.  This memory for trivia has been a life long skill of mine.  My brother insists that I’m imagining things when I try to remind him of tiny events that happened in our childhood.

Anyway, I’ve decided that to celebrate this auspicious event, I will take this opportunity to list a few tips on marriage:

Use your tears wisely.  When His Nibs and I moved in together first, every time we started fighting or he was particularly stubborn about something that was important to me, I’d start crying.  This very quickly loses its power.  Before you know where you are, you’ll be getting ready to squeeze out a few tears so that he’ll do the washing up without your input, and he’ll mutter “here comes the waterworks” under his breath.  And that’s a day to remember.  Because that’s the day you’ll realise that you’ve lost your power.  Even when you start crying with good reason.  In my case, I really hurt my finger once when we were both trying to replace a fence panel Poppy had headbutted to death.  It was an actual injury, there was bleeding, and he decided the cut wasn’t as bad as I was making it out to be, and that I should carry on with the work and “don’t start crying”.  If he had had any respect left for the tears, he would have reacted more to my liking.

If, like us, you spend more time than you want to out of your house, because you have to work all the time to pay for the fecking thing, do not spend more than half the time you’re in the house cleaning it.  This is a waste of time.  Especially if you share said house with a husband like mine who leaves an inch of cold coffee in mugs all over the house and who seems to mess up the entire lower level of the house just trimming his beard.  Only a husband like His Nibs, who has a grin that has me for an eejit, can get away with the kind of caper.  Just accept a certain amount of dust and get on with it.

There are rows that you will have for the rest of your lives together.  His Nibs and I haven’t a minute’s luck in the mornings.  There’s unending shouting and roaring and sulking and there would be crying, if it hadn’t lost its power, as set out above, every single morning.  I can’t get up in the mornings, because I go to bed too late.  His Nibs springs out of bed far too early and is bossy and shouty and difficult.  This will never end.  And we’ve decided to accept this.  The fights we have in the mornings end as soon as we get in the car and I go back to sleep, and are not mentioned again.  They don’t count.  The sooner you both decide what your version of our morning row is, the faster you can get over it.

His Nibs says the only thing he ever forces himself to remember as a tip on marriage is “Happy Wife Happy Life.”  I think it’s a bit of a cheek for him to say this.  He couldn’t think disappearing every week to a hurling match, which he records on television while he’s gone, then coming home and watching the same match on television, then watching the highlights again that night, leads to a happy wife.  The only reason he has a happy wife is that he had the presence of mind to marry a woman lazy enough to not get hysterical about these things.  So maybe he’s an oracle of wisdom after all.

I was trying to think up of more questions for him, as our lunch ended.  He’d finished his steak sandwich, and was picking through my leftover pasta, looking for hidden bits of bacon, when he spoke again.

“I remember the wedding song.  It was great.  It was called You’re The One.  And that bit was definitely true.”  He grinned at me, and I grinned back and stopped quizzing him.

This type of talk makes me confident that we’ll make it another year.

Love at First Sight

 

I wasn’t expecting it.  In fact, I’d be hoping against hope that it wouldn’t happen.  But today, once again, I got into trouble for falling in love without warning.

It’s all my mother’s fault.  She has decided, out of the blue, that she’s fed up buying frying pans.  She tells me that she’s sick of burning the arse out of the ones she’s been using to date, and she’s decided that if she goes with the quality stuff, it might be a bit slower to lose its mojo.

So, since she was in our house for the weekend, she wondered today whether we should make our way to Kildare Village, so she could go to the Le Creuset outlet, and think about spending more on a frying pan than she did on her first cooker.

I was worried.  I’m familiar with Kildare Village.  And the Le Creuset shop is directly beside the Radley shop.  Radley is a British brand that makes lovely leather handbags.  I’m very fond of them and have been known to buy them quite frequently.  Even though I can’t afford them, don’t need them, and will never get full value out of them.

I voiced my concerns to my mother.  She is aware of my weaknesses, and didn’t argue with me.  We agreed that we would avert our eyes from the Radley shop, pretend it had closed down or something, concentrate on frying pans, and not look left or right on our way into the shop.

And that’s what we did.  I didn’t even sneak a look at the window display on my way in.  I was a warrior.

The trouble started when my Mam couldn’t choose a frying pan.  They had a crazy range, different sizes and depths, and made of different materials, and what have you.  I’d love to say I was fascinated, but I wasn’t, in truth.  I did my best to be interested, but there isn’t much you can pretend to like in a kitchen shop, when you never cook.

My mother knew this, and I think she had mischief on her mind. 

Also, an expenditure of the type she was undertaking takes some consideration.  You wouldn’t like to buy the wrong pan, and then discover you needed one with a lid, or it wasn’t deep enough to cook a stir fry in, and that you needed to buy another one.

She was almost sure which one she wanted.  We decided, however, that she should think about it for a few minutes before doing the deed.

We wandered out of the shop, promising to return.  The woman in there couldn’t have made it more obvious that she didn’t believe us, and insisted we take a catalogue setting out all their products with us.

We paused outside the door.  We looked at each other, and started to slowly turn right.  That was our mistake.
I asked my mother where she thought we might think about her frying pan.

“I don’t know” she said “we could just wander around.”

By the time she had the words out of her mouth, we were stepping over the doorstep into the Radley shop.

And that’s when I fell in love.  It was sitting there, on an eye level shelf, waiting for me.  I think it might have actually been waiting for me.  It looked as if it should fling itself off the shelf and straight onto my shoulder.

I actually caught my breath, and grabbed my mother by the arm.  The same thing has happened to her, in the same shop, so she knew exactly what was going on. 

“Should we go somewhere else?”

“I can’t.  Not yet.”

The shop assistant smiled at me.  She had probably hoped it was a friendly and welcoming smile, but she looked like a shark staring at his dinner.

“Nice to see someone falling in love at the door.”

I closed my ears to her.  I wouldn’t be tempted.  It looked expensive, even by Radley standards.  And the television licence and ESB bills are almost pulsating with impatience on the phone table.  Not to mention the household charge from last year, which we have yet to register for.

I just stood looking at it.

It’s black, made of butter soft leather and slouchy and casual in shape.  It has two short handles as well as a long shoulder strap.

It’s perfect for me.  It can easily hold all my bits and pieces including my kindle, and a couple of notebooks in case the plot for the Great Irish novel hits me while I’m in the queue in Boots.

“How much is it?” my mother asked.

I was actually stroking it.  I took a deep breath, and drew the price tag toward me.  For the second time in minutes, my stomach flipped.

I’ve often spent far too much on a bag without really thinking about it.  But never this much.  Even I, in my most foolish moments, would draw back from a handbag at this price.

If only I hadn’t loved it.  My beloved mother offered to lend me the money, but I couldn’t bring myself to accept, not for a handbag.

I have to admit, I was pretty sad to leave it. 

That happens to me sometimes. I see something and I want it so much I’m willing to sell my soul for it.  Usually handbags, or shoes.  Sometimes a lovely notebook.  But no notebook I’ve ever seen is so expensive that there’s absolutely no way I can swing it.

 I turned to my Mam

“Quick, let’s go back and get your pan, before my heart breaks.”

We trotted back next door, where the frying pan, the sole purpose of our journey, was bought and paid for.  There was one a draws for customers going on, you know the type, give them your email address, and you might win a €100 voucher.  I must have been wearing my utterly miserable face, but as well as giving my Mam a form for it, the assistant offered me one. 

For a second, I had a shiver of excitement.  Maybe it was a voucher for Kildare Village in general, and I’d win, and the handbag would become possible.  But no, the voucher was only for the kitchen shop.  A casserole dish wouldn’t be much consolation, I felt, so I didn’t even bother.

When we got outside I insisted that we have a sit down on a bench.  Still outside the Radley shop.

There’s no easy way to say this.  I bought the bag.  On the credit card. 

I’m begging now, but NOBODY can tell His Nibs, he will go absolutely bananas. 

Obviously I’m overcome with guilt and shame.

But I love the bag.  Which makes the guilt and shame difficult to maintain.

I’ll be sleeping with it right beside my bed tonight.  So I can pet it during the night. 

Feck it, I might even bring it into the bed with me, if His Nibs is sound asleep.