The Best Day?

This post began a few months ago, although its roots are 20 years old today. In its previous life, this post was about my feelings that my wedding was not exactly the BEST DAY OF MY LIFE  (bold, caps and italics my own – and almost everybody’s really). The combination of some things not going how I pictured them (why wasn’t I glowing? I thought I should be glowing!) and some pretty direct criticisms about how inattentive I was and mistakes I’d made regarding seating arrangements and photographs caused me to view the day with a little disappointment.

When I came back to work on the post again though, it didn’t sit right with me. I had highlighted how social media puts pressure on us to create and expect things to be beautiful, perfect, unique, and extremely photogenic. It was also just me wanting things to be perfect. Looking back again, I saw all those people who’d made the day special for us by helping, advising, creating, and even just being there, many of them in a BC Ferries line up before I was even out of bed that morning. The small wrong things didn’t really matter any more.

And instead of the Pinterest fails, I thought more about the morning after our wedding when I woke up and two thoughts hit me, one right after the other.

The first was, “WHAT HAVE I DONE?!!!!”, realizing the implications: leaving my home, family and country, possibly to never live there again. This thought didn’t have a chance at being answered as the next one rushed in: “We have so little time!”

Neither of us were young when we met, and it was five years before our wedding. I thought we’d be ancient by the time we got to 20 years. Fortunately that’s not true (our kids probably think it is), but I was right about time rushing past. I like to think we’re grabbing those moments when we can, to enjoy and to cherish, to have and to hold.

And back to the BEST DAY: it is difficult to pinpoint one, when there are so many great moments and afternoons and even entire weekends.

I do have a list of best: waking up after a lie-in and realizing that yet again my husband has been up early on a Saturday cleaning the bathrooms before he goes to work; having a glass of juice delivered to my bedside many mornings; rarely having an empty petrol tank in the car; coming in the back gate with my bike after a day at work and seeing our kitchen lit up, with someone making dinner.

It’s the winks across the table during a music session, the chats in the car while we are alone for a few moments. Of course, the weekends away together, dinners out (or in our case, breakfast on a weekday cause that’s when we’re both free, and I love breakfast) are highlights.

We’re having a very small soirée to mark this milestone and while I will be having some fun making it special, it won’t be perfect. But I’m betting it will join the list of all the other bests.