Week One - A Day in the Life - Fair Weather Ahead
Well, it finally happened! Last
week I got married to
Paul on Valentine’s Day and now I am starting my new life
with him.
Paul and I met at work and
started dating about a
year and a half ago. From the first moment we went out together, I was
sure we
were meant for one another. I don’t know what made me feel
this way, but I just
knew that we were going to be together for a long time.
When I told my parents about him
and what his name
was, my mother rolled her eyes in the very dramatic way only she can
roll her eyes,
and declared this to be so romantic and auspicious. “Paolo
and Francesca were
the lovers described by Dante in his Divine Comedy. They were damned to
be in
hell for eternity because they loved each other and fought everybody
and
everything in order to be together. When Dante meets them, they are
still
together, and still in love with one another.” Francesca is
my name, so I
started calling Paul “Paolo” and this name came to
define our most intimate
moments.
The last six months were mostly
taken up by planning,
organizing and making decisions for our wedding. I had never thought I
wanted a
wedding. Eloping was just fine with me. No white trailing dress, no
flower
girls, no organ and all the jazz. After all, Paul and I had lived
together for
almost a year before our wedding, and I thought the big party was just
a waste
of money. I saw myself as a pragmatic professional woman who was above
all
these old traditions. But my mother had always dreamed of planning a
wedding for
her only daughter, so I did not have the heart to disappoint her.
What I had not anticipated is
how this wedding grew
on me in the following months, little by little. I began to go through
wedding
magazines and this morphed into hours of conversation with mom and
friends
about flower arrangements, food, place, the wedding dress, who to
invite, and
on and on.
Paul was lukewarm about my
growing obsession, looking
at me with condescending eyes. All of this was, in his opinion,
“just being a
girl” and he was not interested in being part of it. Whether
he truly felt this
way or he was just behaving like he thought a guy should I will never
know. I
am not sure it matters at this point.
A lot of our friends have been
married and are already
divorced. Other friends are still married, but they seem to jump at any
opportunity to get away from each other and have some fun with old
single
friends. This does not sound very good, I know, for Paul and me. Others
are
still single, either looking for the perfect match, or swearing they
are not
interested in marriage because they have been burned in the past and
are still
licking their wounds, too afraid to jump in the fray again.
I know the statistics: if you
marry today for the
first time, you have a 50/50 chance of making it. But
Paul and I are different. We really love each other. Even our
friends can see how well suited we are to one another and tell us so, I
think
with a twinge of envy. Paul and I know
that our marriage will be different from those of some of our
friends. Our future
together will be smooth and easy, a continuation of what we had so far.
After
all, why would marriage change our relationship and our feelings for
one
another?