People sometimes asked our secret to staying married for 51 years, and we often reply “Don’t sweat the small stuff” – meaning put the little annoyances about one another in their proper context compared with all the good things. However, we think the real reason is that, like Garp, our marriage was pre-disastered.
If you don’t know The World According to Garp by John Irving, you should definitely read it. There is a scene in which Garp is looking to buy a house, when the house he was looking at was crashed into by a small plane. He immediately turned to the realtor and said, “We’ll take it – it has been pre-disastered.”
Well, that’s how we feel about the marriage, with the first mini-disaster occurring about a week before the blessed date. I was walking across Commonwealth Avenue in Boston and forgot that it is an 8-lane road, not a 4-lane. So, I crossed the first two lanes after looking in the right direction and crossing the first of 3 median strips. I then looked to my right and, of course, there was no traffic coming from that direction because it was all still coming from my left. The car’s beep alerted me just in time, and tragedy was averted.
About that same time, Rosemary was driving home to Millis from Wellesley, a trip she had made thousands of times before, and she suddenly felt like she was in Twilight Zone, with nothing looking familiar. She didn’t know for sure where to turn, but did so by instinct and managed to get home successfully.
In the middle of the week our tuxedos were all ready – well, not quite all, mine was missing. At least they straightened that out before the wedding date.
Also mid-week, our travel agent called to tell us the resort we had booked on Eleuthera for our honeymoon had just closed down for repairs. So, we still flew initially to Nassau, but changed to another resort on a different island in the Bahamas – Exuma. Moe about that later.
The night before the wedding, the extended families had the “rehearsal” dinner along the river in Cambridge, MA. Rosemary’s father parked his Cadillac and we joined everyone else in the restaurant. After an appropriate delay post-ordering, we were all served our dinners – well, not quite all, my order was missing. But that got straightened out too, so I didn’t starve to death, and we had a lovely evening.
We went down to drive home and Rosemary’s father could not find the car. He was sure it had been stolen, but we all thought he had just forgotten where we parked it. No, it had been stolen – showed up somewhere in Boston a couple of days later. So, I had to take my parents’ car to drive them back to their hotel, then return to pick up the Weinsteins to drive them all home in Millis. I then returned to the hotel in Cambridge at about 3 am.
The big day arrived and we all managed to somehow make it to the MIT chapel, and beautiful but quite small circular room on the MIT campus. It was June, so a little warm and stuffy, and the ceremony was proceeding nicely until we heard sounds of someone in attendance having what sounded like a heart attack – moans and groans and deep breaths – followed by the commotion of people going over to help out. We started to turn around to see what was happening, but the rabbi told us the ceremony must not stop, so we exchanged vows and kisses and then went outside to see her grandfather on the ground, leaning on one elbow, complaining vociferously that he was not going to miss the reception. After all, he had come all the way from Florida to dance with his granddaughter. However, cooler heads prevailed, and he was taken to a local hospital for observation. Of course, we visited him there, but he was very disappointed nevertheless.
Now to the reception. Rosemary had for many months been telling everyone we were going to have a chocolate wedding cake. The catered assured her this was not a problem, and we were looking forward to it. However, when the first cut was made, imaging our shock when it turned out to be plain, old white cake. The catered explained afterward that it had to do with the density of the cake, and they couldn’t make one with chocolate. Ah well, not a tragedy.
After a nice day in Nassau we went on to Exuma – not Eleuthera – and enjoyed a beautiful Bahamian day that we topped off my sailing across to what we thought was a deserted island. Since it was deserted, why not skinny-dip? Which we did. I had taken a sailing class at MIT, so I wasn’t too worried about how to maneuver our way back to shore. The boom, however, had different ideas and it decided to knock my glassed off into the bottom of the Caribbean. Well, I could still see well enough to get back without further events.
Until that evening, when we sadly realized that skinny-dipping on the first day in the Bahamas had not been a good idea. We were burned so badly that it was painful for our bodies to even touch the sheets, even after lathering up with aloe. We each suffered in our own bed and managed to get in some sleep, and the next day was at least tolerable.
The rest of the week was better, until 2 days before our scheduled return to Nassau, when we learned that the airline that flew from Exuma to Nassau had gone out of business. So, faced with the problem of how to get back to Nassau, we knocked on neighboring doors to ask what they were doing. An older couple near our room had, it turns out, chartered a 4-seater on the same day. They very kindly offered to sell us 2 seats – we were not surprised when we learned he was a Vice President with Chase Manhattan Bank, so it would have been shocking if he had actually offered young newlyweds the two extra seats on the plane that his company had undoubtedly chartered for him. Ah well, one of life’s lessons learned.
The next day, one day prior to returning to Nassau, we again thought about sailing to our deserted island. It was a beautiful, calm, cloudless day and we had plenty of sunscreen this time. For some reason, maybe we were just too tired, we decided against sailing. In the space of about 15 minutes, this gorgeous day turned into close to a hurricane. Had we gone sailing, we undoubtedly would have had our bodies found somewhere between the Bahamas and Africa. The, when we mentioned this to one of the resort staff, they told us it was not a deserted island – in fact, there was a resort there, just over the sand dune where we had gone previously, with hundreds of guests. Oops!
Finally, the restaurant was located on a rocky promontory, and they were serving dinner despite the conditions. As it turns out, there was water inside too, about 3 inches deep. So we took off our shoes, as did the wait staff, and enjoyed our last meal there.
After all that over the space of about two weeks, we figured our marriage could survive anything, as long as we kept a sense of humor about the mini-disasters that inevitably occur.
Bob and Ro's Excellent Adventure 