Most call it their honeymoon. We call it ‘our bucket-moon.’
The French have a phrase ‘voyage à la façon anglaise,’ referring to that time following the wedding where newlyweds set sail to romantic and exotic destinations to celebrate love and happiness, giving rise – like a full moon – to the notion that the first month of marriage is the sweetest.
Like the bucket we used at our wedding however (how else was she to kiss me?), we have figuratively turned the traditional bliss of marriage beginnings upside down.
Within a week of our wedding, the bucket on which she stood then she scoots along the floor now to scrub and paint the baseboard. She calls from her perch on that bucket in the shower stall – which walls she has scoured for the last hour – asking for assistance to stand which embrace I am happy – though slow – to supply given we are both over-70-newlyweds.
Finding love again late in life is a blessing found by few. The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that each year, out of 1,000 widowed women aged 65 and older, only three women remarry.
Just the other night, as we were wearily heading to our cottage where we stay while preparing my house to sell, splattered with paint and smelling like Clorox, we held one another below our first full moon.
Richard Hubert (1552) wrote pessimistically of this whole honeymoon thing observing that love will wane, like a phase of the moon:
“Th’one loveth the other at the beginning exceedingly, the likelihood of their exceadinge love appearing to aswage.”
But it is also possible to have a happily-ever-after-even-after-70 love, a fairy-tale-twice-told love, a honeymoon-(bucket-moon)-never-ending love.
And the chances of that are exceptionally good when you have a beautiful bucket-bride.
