Comments Off on Anniversary girl almost forgot about the #BuffyRewatch #alyxkelly25
As of today, I’ve been not-legally married to Kelly for 9,131 days or 25 years. (And legally married to her for ten and change.)
We got married at a pub event at the University of Lethbridge on January 21, 1989. The pub was hosted by the local NDP club, which meant all of our friends were pretty much in attendance by default, and said club was screening the Rocky Horror Picture Show. The lovely and much-missed Mirella Zappone conducted the service just before the RHPS wedding scene, and the attendees pelted us with rice.
Also, I fell into the men’s room in my wedding dress when trying to avoid a (water)gunfight.
The celebrating starts in earnest tomorrow night–tonight, we’re going to yoga. But it’s all so very exciting that I nearly forgot to post about the latest Buffy essay, “Wouldn’t you like to be a Slayer, too?”
There’s this Violent Femmes song whose lyrics circle ’round this bit of text:
I built a machine; I took over the world.
(In one weekend)
I did it because I was looking for a project, and it was either take over the world or learn French.
So I took over the world, and next weekend, I can learn French.
Because this song exists and is stamped on my brain, I said to Kelly this week: “She’s obviously a take over the world or learn French person,” and she knew exactly what I meant.
This (largely unsingable) Violent Femmes video is brought to you by the Committee to have A&K be completely incomprehensible by the time they’re in the old folks home.
There’s a line early in The Winslow Boy: “Let’s take the sentimental part of the project for granted,” it goes. It’s a dad’s way of saying to a young man, “I get you’re in love with my daughter, but let’s not go talking about all these feels of yours, all right?”
To which I say Fuck That! If I’m gonna make a big public fuss over my anniversary, let’s lead with emotion.
I fell irrevocably in love with my wife Kelly when I saw her dancing at a bagpipe funk concert sponsored by the Lethbridge Folk Festival, back in the late Eighties. I remember the moment. The thunderbolt. We’d been friends awhile, had gone to the concert together, but boom. Everything changed. And that night she slept over at my place and…
… and nothing happened. No romance, no heartfelt confessions. I was dating someone else, see.
(Which was a situation that went on, messily, for rather an embarrassingly long while. It took time for me to get my head out of Denialsville, otherwise known as my ass, and the rest of me out of the prior relationship.)
This thing K and I have, it is the billion dollar lottery win. It is the One True Love™. It is hearts and flowers; the glass slipper. It has the feel of fate, and tastes of the marrow-deep conviction that there is no other. All those schmaltzy “two hearts beating as one” lyrics and greeting cards may as well have been written for us.
And though it doesn’t feel anything but right, it’s easy to see from a distance that it’s weird, because I’m a pragmatic, tough-minded and generally rational being, with little patience for magical thinking. My head doesn’t take seriously the proposal that in a world filled with billions, each of us has one other half whom they might never actually meet. I’ve watched Tim Minchin’s lengthy, slightly NSFW, “If I Didn’t Have You” a hundred times because I love it. (Thanks, Linda C, for that!)
And my brain buys in, utterly. Perhaps especially the part of love being made more powerful by the trauma of shared existence.
Logic aside, I live the happily ever after implied in every Austen novel and romantic comedy. The right person came along for me, the One. And that, my friends, is that. I love Kelly with a passion that borders on worship.
So our very first plan for our upcoming 25th wedding anniversary–this’d be the not-legal wedding, obviously, though our tenth legal anniversary was this past August–was to spend a couple weeks in Mexico.
That morphed into an intention to go to a monkey-infested surf resort in Nicaragua that had yoga every morning.
And that turned into Texas, then Nicaragua.
And then, as it turned out we were moving to Toronto, it devolved and shifted, until finally what we have is a few days off work, a fancy meal out, and tickets to see a musical, London Road, about a serial killer in England.
On Saturday, however, we decided that on top of the above plan, we were going to drag the whole Internet into the racket, by going on and on and happily on about the whole thing. Twenty five years! OMG, 25! We’ve been hitched since 1989, folks! Wow!
I warn you now to expect very little from this blog, the Instagram feed, and Facebook between now and the 21st. There may be posts about everything from true love, good luck, and anniversaries past to the legal wedding. There may be a logo. A theme song. We’re seriously considering approaching random strangers on the street and asking them to take (heavily bundled in our winter-clothes) pictures of us.
Join the fun in any fashion you like, or cover your ears and know it’ll be over soon enough.
Edited to add: I’m not sure why the photo links aren’t working. I’ll fix it, promise!
As of today, I’ve been not-legally married to Kelly for 9,131 days or 25 years. (And legally married to her for ten and change.)
: “Let’s take the sentimental part of the project for granted,” it goes. It’s a dad’s way of saying to a young man, “I get you’re in love with my daughter, but let’s not go talking about all these feels of yours, all right?”