The fact is, marriage
is no piece of cake

Robyn’s Hood
By Robyn McCloskey

Last week my husband and I celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary, which has put me in an uncharacteristically nostalgic mood.
As I sit here thinking back on our wedding, I am reminded of a beautiful fall day, a gorgeous white gown, a handsome young groom standing tall and proud in a black tux and tails. A day surrounded by family and friends, laughter and love. It was absolutely perfect. It was almost perfect. Actually, it was sort of perfect.
What would a real-life wedding day be without a few mishaps? At least that’s our motto . . . now.
Other than my husband, I really only had one serious boyfriend. His name was Chuck. Chuck was a good guy. Chuck was a good boyfriend. Chuck was a fixture in my parents’ home for about three years. At the end of our relationship, Chuck was spending more time with my family than with me, which may have had something to do with our breakup.
A few years after that, I had been steadily dating a guy named Chris, the man who would become my husband, and with whom I was madly in love. My parents, however, were still so devastated by the loss of "their Chuck" that they never quite took the time to warm up to Chris. But they trusted my judgment and were supportive of us marrying. So marry we did.
As we were pronounced "husband and wife," we exited the church and waited for the receiving line to begin. The first to come back and congratulate us were my parents. We were all teary-eyed and hugging and kissing.
Then my dad, who never quite had the gift for saying the right thing at the right time, extended his hand to shake the hand of my new husband and exclaimed, "Congratulations, Chuck." To which my husband, who is ever so gracious, replied, "I’m Chris, but thanks anyway." My father, realizing his Freudian slip, mumbled a quick apology and made a hasty retreat to the parking lot.
We managed to recover from this minor faux pas and headed to our reception. Everything was going great when the announcement was made that it was time to cut the cake. As we each took a slice, I thought to myself, "To smash or not to smash?"
Unfortunately, we had failed to discuss this minor detail beforehand. But knowing Chris as well as I thought I did, I assumed he was going to smash the cake. Keep in mind that Chris is 6-feet-3 and I am 5-feet-2. I figured my only course of action was to strike first. So I took my piece of cake, aimed it at his face, and . . . that’s the last thing I remember.
Chris’ version is that he claims he would never have thought of smashing a piece of cake in my face. (I believe this has more to do with my obsession with food and never wanting to waste a perfectly good piece of cake than with chivalry.) When he saw me coming at him, he knew he had to "protect himself."
So, in "self-defense," he reached out his hand to stop me, or so he says. Somehow the fingernail on the thumb of his right hand dug its way under the skin on the tip of my nose and proceeded to slice through, up and into my eye — not only splicing my nose in half but crumpling up my contact lens as well. I was now bleeding and legally blind.
It was at this point that my mom turned to Chris and said, "Some jerk you turned out to be."
Needless to say we do not have a lot of pictures from our honeymoon, only because I was very self-conscious of the pulsating scab across the entire length of my nose. Fortunately, most of the wedding pictures had been taken before the "unfortunate cake incident."
I am however, happy, to report that my parents not only warmed up to Chris but grew to love and appreciate him almost as much as I do. I am also happy to report that despite such an inauspicious beginning to our marriage, we are still very much together and very much in love, even after 20 years.
Marriage has been wonderful to me. I have the scars to prove it. ••
Robyn McCloskey’s column appears each week in the Northeast Times. She can be reached at crmccloskey@verizon.net