This is going to be one of those rather disjointed post – my younger son and his lovely fiancé just got married today. Dad started work at around 2 AM and we had a spit roast and platters of huge spiny lobsters and more other food than a tribe of starving people could eat in week, on a wind-still perfect day overlooking the sea.
They got married on the beach at Trousers Point, barefoot on the sand. It was very beautiful. Very romantic. Very emotional. Very happy. The pictures and sounds of the waves will have dozens of young couples dreaming of the same, and probably not a few executing variations of the same.
It will probably remain with them forever, as that romantic end of the book perfect scene.
Of course, it isn’t. It’s just the start, and like any marriage it’ll probably have its rough and smooth, and an awful lot of plain ordinary and pragmatic, which isn’t getting married on a golden beach next to a crystal clear azure sea, where your bare footprints together, are first on that tide-washed sand.
But that’s not the story. And we are here talking about stories, because… well, we love them. They give us entertainment, hope, pleasure (yeah, there are people who like miserable sermons, I’m sure. Not me. I do like happy endings, or at least satisfying ones). The story leaves out that this September, and the sea temperature is 11 degrees centigrade (sorry, no habla la Fahrenheit, and the kids have used all my cap, so I can’t easily look it up) and wet sand, early morning sparkling in the sun is… chilly underfoot. And this is our windy season, being lucky enough to get a good day… is luck. The seaweed… smells like seaweed. And that glorious spit roast and pretty plates of lobster and Pavlova, took a lot of time and work.
So that was what I wanted to say, besides to wish my boy and his new wife love and togetherness for all of their days, even in those smelly and mundane bits… We writers build the dreams. We give the food for those hopes.
It’s pretty good thing to do, really.
Mad Genius Club 
16 responses to “The illusion, the dream and reality”
52f.
Some desktop calculators will do simple unit comversions.
Congrats to the fam!
🙂 Thanks. I was just too tired.
Congratulations! And yes, we need to tell more stories, the happy kind.
Yep, stories to feed those hopes and dreams, and make the world seem a better place 🙂
But sometimes jokes about literally cold feet and smelly seaweed can give life and reality to a memory, or a scene in a book. They become part of the beauty, the memory.
And you want to be careful, all that talk about the food. You could find yourself with a sideline catering beach weddings.
Given the kind of money that folks in Japan, China, Singapore, etc. put into weddings, this could be lucrative sideline for Flinderites. Fly the couple and family down, put them into the luxury accommodations, hold a beach wedding and shivaree, pack the whole bunch back into the airplane, and cash that check!
Chuckle. They got cold feet all right, but still went ahead. And no. I WON’T do that much for anyone but my kids. Not even for lots of money :-).
All happiness for the young couple!
They have a tough row to hoe. She has to go back to Zimbabwe for two months, and James cannot (visa). Anyway, the deed is done.
Hopefully that will be dwarfed in the long run by many, many years together. 🙂
That’s as beautiful as the fantasy landscapes in the MMORPG I was playing this morning. Mine had pirates, though. 🙂
Congratulations to the newlyweds and to the proud parents who can go take a nice nap now.
Nap. I wish. Proud parents have been cleaning up all morning. And I was a meanie. I didn’t make a pirate-ship cake for them.
Congratulations to your son and daughter-in-law! May they have a long life full of happiness and love!
Thank you:-) I do prefer acquiring daughters when they are too old to need to be taken shoe-shopping. (I did take her in to get gum-boots, though)
Congrats to you and your younger spawn. May their marriage overcome all difficulties.
Congrats to all of you, Dave, especially the newlyweds!