Raven's Roads
Living an interesting life: the travels and musings
of motorcycling author Linda R. Moore

Apr 4, 2007

Thinking Out Loud: It was twenty years ago today

This is not about Sergeant Pepper teaching his band to play.

In October, it will have been fifty years since my parents married in a small civil ceremony. With Mam being Catholic and Dad a non-practicing Anglican, this seemed like the best way forward for them both. They were penpals first, falling in love through letters, and Mam took a long train journey from former Yugoslavia to England in order to make the match. She was nineteen. I still think it was an incredibly brave thing to do.

My brother arrived a year or so later, and I made my own debut ten years after that.

Twenty years ago today my brother and my sister-in-law tied the knot.

I joined them as a bridesmaid, wearing a peach dress first and changing later into white pants and a vivid blue shiny blouse. My hair was shoulder length, worn in a frizzy poodle perm that had been a disappointment from day one; at seventeen I had little sense of style. Nothing much has changed since then.

I’m sure that all weddings come with their share of angst, unless you elope like Don and I did. There are all the family considerations, the people to invite, who sits where, hoop or no hoop; whether the dog can come into the church or not. Silly things that are, in the end, absolutely meaningless. But at the end, when we all came to the church and later the reception, we were all friends, all happy, and nobody behaved like a dork (well, not much, anyway).

It was a beautiful day. The speeches were short and sweet, the Scottish family didn’t get upset when my shoe flew off towards them during the can-can, and I had an exceedingly rare extrovert moments when I and one of Anne’s friends danced the Time Warp alone in front of all the guests. And no, I wasn’t drunk, although I would probably have to be now in order to do anything of the sort.

I married my first husband in 1993, and meeting my second husband in 1996 hastened the way to the divorce roughly twelve months later. This set the stage for interesting timing, though: in October 1997 Don and I were married. So yes, that means that this year we are doing 10th, 20th and 50th wedding anniversaries.

So that is what I have been thinking about today. My brother’s and sister-in-law’s wedding, and being a teenager with a frizzy poodle perm, and my family’s liking for years ending in “7.”

May we all have a wonderful year, and do the time-warp again together.