The bittersweet emotions of reliving your honeymoon 25 years ( and four children) later
AN iDYLLiC Mediterranean morning and i’m sitting in a cafe overlooking a harbour f ull of boats bobbing on the azure water. But it’s not the boats i’m watching, nor the gulls gliding and dipping across the cloudless sky: it’s the young couple on the adjacent table.
They’re in their 20s, fresh-faced, happy. Obviously newlyweds, the bands on their left hands are shop-window shiny. She taps hers self-consciously against her coffee cup. He leans forward to dust a croissant crumb from her lips. They’re fun-looking, perhaps a touch naive. Their optimism shines as brightly as the gold on their fingers.
They have no idea of what lies ahead and perhaps that’s just as well— because if they did, they’d be looking far less relaxed and a great deal more scared.
The people i’m staring at are strangers but they remind me very much of another couple who, 25 years ago, sat there, fingers intertwined, staring soppily into each others eyes. The woman was me, aged 25, and the man was Gary, 27, my new husband. Together we’d travelled to Menorca on honeymoon. We were on the threshold of everything: our careers, our lives, and most of all — our relationship.
We’d never been back since, but a quarter of a century on, to celebrate our silver wedding anniversary, here we are again. We look older, a few pounds heavier and sometimes we’re downright grumpy, but i’d like to think the sparkle is just about still there in our eyes, if you look hard enough.
As hard-up honeymooners we rented a pied-a-terre; this time around we’ve got a huge villa with its own pool. it may sound as if we’re better off but in truth we’re not, for four very good reasons. We’ve brought along our daughters: Rosie, 21, elinor, 19, Miranda, 14, and 11-year-old Catriona.
And although a big family doesn’t come cheap, it has been worth any hardship because two-and-a-half decades ago we never would have dreamed we would produce such wonderful, beautiful children.
i don’t say that to be boastful, but before we had the girls, we had no idea of the true miracle children represent in a marriage, for those couples lucky enough to have them. When two people become three, four or even six, everything changes.
Back in 1988, the last time i was in this harbour, i thought marriage was about me and Gary. Today i can see that was simply the starting-point: the whole axis of our relationship altered i rrevocably once children came along. A baby parachutes into your life, into the heart of your coupledom, and overnight everything changes. Suddenly someone else is more important than anything else there is or ever has been. it’s awesome — as my girls would put it.
Looking at my daughters over dinner one night i couldn’t help but well up with tears. ‘What’s wrong with Mum?’ one of them would ask from time to time. ‘Oh, you know how she is,’ another replied. ‘She’s being all sentimental again.’
i caught Gary’s eye and i knew what he was thinking: how lucky are we?
HAviNG four children, i have to admit, was my idea — i come from a large Catholic family, Gary is from a tiny Presbyterian one. He had one brother, six years older; his parents were only children, so
he had no cousins. But i wanted the kind of larger-than-life, eventful family i came from.
Gary took me on trust, and i’m profoundly grateful. i know that if he had married anybody else he would have settled for just a couple of children, but he’s been entirely won round to my big-family ethos.
i’ve earned the right to be sentimental. A quarter of a century is a long haul for any couple and there were times i didn’t think we’d make it. While we have enjoyed a great many highs together, we’ve also endured our share of lows, from ill health to money woes and career disappointments.
Ten years in, Gary’s devotion to his work, a trait i once so admired, became a source of huge resentment. His workaholism meant many nights i was left alone to cope with sick and fractious children. My enthusiasm for ‘ attachment parenting’ — having our babies always with us, even in our bed at night — was tricky for him to negotiate.
All of this is the fabric of marriage until, finally, you fall into one camp: you become one of the four out of ten who throw in the towel or one of the six who hang on in there. i feel proud that we’re the latter — not that
there weren’t dark days in between. The scariest moment in a marriage, i once read, is not the moment you realise you don’t love your partner any more: it’s the moment it hits you that you no longer like them.
A few years ago i did a series of interviews with couples who’d been married 60-plus years. They were candid about how they’d stayed the course.
One thing i discovered was that, whenever the couples had come up against big problems, simply hanging on and waiting for the storm to pass had led to better times — not just once, but in every single case. Another thing the interviews taught me was this: what sometimes passes for ‘perfection’ in a marriage could very well be — whisper it — a touch boring.
Some of the ‘happy’ marriages i heard about were rather uneventful. And whatever else has happened in our long years together, one thing i’m grateful for is that we’ve always had plenty to say to one another.
it might not have been smoochie stuff, but as far as i’m concerned my husband is the most interesting man i’ve ever had dinner with. He listens, he’s well-read, he’s fair, and he invariably has a take on an issue that i haven’t considered.
No matter what lies ahead we will never falter for conversation.
Marriages rarely fail over just one issue — and sometimes, it seems to me, the problems lie not in the relationship, but in one partner’s dissatisfaction with his or her own life.
Often, i’ve realised the root cause of my fed-upness at any point wasn’t Gary, but something else i could tackle: my job, friends, appearance.
A marriage is the bedrock of a life — but it’s not the entirety. Other things conspire to make a person unhappy — and marriage is too easy a thing to blame. There’s always fault if you look for it.
WHeN my father died 48 years after my parents’ got married, my mother wrote this tribute with her flowers on the coffin: ‘ So many happy memories.’ That is what it’s about. Gary and i have memories of babies being born; of small children playing on the beach; of older ones, in their toobig, pristine uniforms, setting off for their first day at school.
From this summer we have a new memory: Rosie, our eldest, graduated from university. it was a hot July day, we sat side by side in a big hall with bright lights, and watched as our lovely daughter, in her gown and mortar board, stepped up onto the stage to collect her degree.
There was no one i’d rather have been sitting beside than my husband, the only other person in the world who could feel exactly as i did. And i’m certain he’d say the same.
i hope that in another 25 years we can return to Menorca to celebrate our golden wedding anniversary. How wonderful if, by then, our brood has grown even more.
if our daughters desire the big f amily we craved, we could be paddling in the sea with 16 grandchildren in tow.
But now, i look again at the couple at the next table. i’m in awe of them; their chutzpah, their cheek.
There they are, with laughter in their eyes, believing that whatever life throws at them, they can deal with it together. i raise my glass to them, and i hope with all my heart they are one of the couples who make it.