September 19, 2013 ~ A Year Later

A year ago today
I wrote the first post after I married
Mr. Husband.
*
After a good ten days without blogging or using
FB or really emailing anyone,
Mr. Husband and I were wrapping up the travel
part of our honeymoon,
first in Ottawa and then in Quebec.
*
I remember the shyness I felt of being about to
plunge into a new world,
leaving my country and city behind;
I have only been to Ottawa and thus Canada
twice since.
*
I wrote in a way with a feeling of a type of intensity, not
exactly as one would feel triumph,
as if it was a miracle that the wedding day
went so well;...
though it was a miracle;
one that was supported by prayers of many,
including monastics.
It was indeed a day out of time;
I was told of so many things that
could go wrong on a wedding day.
To expect it and not to worry.
While various ups and downs went into the planning
of the wedding and reception,
menus and caters scrapped, dress not fitting right the first fitting and
here it was in MI and I had to get it right in only two visits;
the finding of the two bridesmaid dresses
(my Mother came to the rescue, I ordering, she picking them up in MI;
indeed most of the things came from MI and people came from all
over Canada, the US and my sister and brother in law from Romania).
And I found out later that my family almost missed getting the flowers,
but by God's mercy did not and then my cousin H. had to suddenly
pitch in to get the flowers on the tables of the reception;
all this I knew of only later.
And the hair dresser's cab was late and so I the bride was also late.
Yet I was so happy and we were busy the whole time getting ready
and the anticipation of that moment when I was finally the Bride
and marrying my beloved Husband and brought in my Father.
It was merely a dream, glorious and bright,
that came true
and the day, from waking up at 4 AM in excitement,
to my family bringing Mr. Husband and I to our first hotel,
it was prefect, all together wonderful.
*
I was on cloud 9 or higher!
I remember the liturgy for the beheading of St. John the Baptist
that we stayed in Ottawa for and got to hear my beloved
spiritual father speak one more time in person
before we left for Quebec City...
*
It was all so wonderful.
So Joyous.
It was as I wrote the paradise of new beginnings.
*
And so I remember being in the Porter Lounge with my
newly married Mr. Husband and eating lunch before
we flew home... and writing that first
blog post a year ago today before we actually got home,
before that last leg of the two-legged flight.
*
And what a flight it was.
We were in the back and suddenly landing was long and choppy
and I as a brand new bride,
not been yet to my new church as a new wife
not yet going week after week to a new place to pray
and slowly getting to know people,
colours, faces, names
and well, the ride was too much.
I fell ill on the plane;
a new bride just coming home from the honeymoon, a few
days before going to her new church the first time
as one who actually would be going there quite regularly.
I guess I found it a great embarrassment,
myself a seasoned traveler who used to use those
sickness bags as envelopes to send letters to my friends back
in the mid 1990's...
(such was my sense of humour)...
*
But so it was and so it began and Mr. Husband went out
once we got home as newlyweds,
home the very first time together and I still weary from being ill;
Mr. Husband came back home with a potted rose plant
and telling me of the word 'solicitous' and so it began,
my husband's demonstrated kindness to his new wife
sick on a plane before she ever got home!
*
Well here we are.
A year later.
A year.
Soon we faced a hurricane, various head colds and then
my mono;
I learned to knit, bake bread, make Mr. Husband dinner;
we traveled; I made many knitted gifts,
we planned and just began our book club.
*
So a few pictures of this moment in time around our home
that we are slowly making into a state of organized beauty.


In August with the help of my cousin H. we
finally got these gifts hung.

All from Romania, the spoon.

The two round icons,
intricately carved.
The note with them framed to go with the note.

When we were back in Ottawa a year after
we were married,
a dear dear friend gave me these beautifully painted
wooden shoes for our first anniversary.
Placed now on our swiveling CD rack with one of
my Oma's doilies I look at it with joy.

Books comfortably piled on my knitting basket.

Reading a book about a woman who lived
in 1967, the year before what was called
the year, 1968, that postmodernism was born.
A year in which she writes of her home, her gardens,
her family and the seasons.
It is all there in that book.
Lovely.

Our coffee table, now neatly organized,
no longer with the tall candles and wide
clear blue glass plate but the thin
opaque white tray with three pear shaped candles.
My sole pink doily/coaster from my Oma matching
the pink candled pear perfectly. 

 

A pile of books that shows the love of our home and
the memories we are already making.
CS Lewis,
whose space trilogy is reminding me of time and now
I have sensed before that things happen in time to us but yet somehow
they are already done and if we thought of it this way
and more in terms, as this way seeks to, in light of
God's eternity, things are perhaps easier to bear,
or at least some mental agitation about them maybe less.
We will see.
Mr. Husband says Lewis is getting these thoughts from Augustine and
I think it is about time I start listening to his Confessions...
*
On this pile we have Christmas Carols,
the first big feast we celebrated together just a few months later
was Christmas.
And then a book Mr. Husband found and I claimed for our
personal library, on the
Glorious Impossible of Christmas
by Madeline L' Engle
and then JRR Tolkien's first edition of the
Father Christmas Letters
that I got Mr. Husband for our first and still now only Christmas.
*
Perhaps surprising that we have so many Christmas books piled
in our living room neatly on display but
so it is and it reflects one of the greatest truths that I know about
my marriage to Mr. Husband,
which someday I will know more deeply I hope,
as I hope for many years with him,
but right now I can tell you,
a year later,
that my marriage to Mr. Husband is nothing
save a gift from God,
an answer to so many prayers.