emsk

It’s funny. I never used to have any particular associations with bells. I mean, I appreciated them as I appreciate most lovely things.

Today, walking across Aotea Square as the 8 am bells rung out from the clock tower, my thoughts swung back to the wedding. Walking out of the old church on Tobermory’s – my husband’s! – arm, the church bells pealing, and unashamedly crying. That was when it first sunk in, I think. This man beside me is my husband, we’ve really done this.

That’s what I think of now when I hear bells. That odd moment of happiness so strange it hurts, on my husband’s arm.

We had a party at home last night. A sort of “Hey, we got married, we’re now home, come say Hi” deal – it was a fantastic evening. Just about everyone I wanted to see turned up (and I understood the absences and missed the people – life happens!) – there was good food, good company, and it was a good night.

Also, I made cake.

I am twenty six years old.

This is how I spent my evening.

I had a lot of Lego as a kid. My nappy bucket (having done it’s duty and been thoroughly cleansed) subsequently became the Lego bucket – fifty or sixty litres of Lego, some from kits, some in bulk, all of it well loved. At about thirteen or fourteen, when I hadn’t played with it in years, Mum suggested – completely well-meaning – that I might want to consider giving it to a couple of young lads, whose parents weren’t terribly well off. At seven and four, respectively, they’d get more use out of it than I did. I agreed, and boy oh boy, those kids were SO HAPPY. I got thanked, again and again, for about six months thereafter.

I regret getting rid of the Lego now. It made sense at the time, but I do wish we’d kept it.

One of my fondest memories of my father isn’t really based on the recollection I have from childhood, but what I remember being told about it later. I love Lego. Always have. And when I was three or four, Dad bought the Lego police station.

Now, the Lego police station in 1988 was a bit different to the Lego of today. There was a helicopter, for a start, which the modern station doesn’t have (much to my disgust). It was seriously cool. And Dad happily hauled all the parts out of the box, and started building my Lego! I toddled over to ‘help’, as small children do, and was politely told to go and help my mother.

I, being an obedient and sweet child, toddled off to Mum. When asked exactly why I was there instead of playing with ‘my’ new Lego, I innocently explained that Daddy said Mummy needed my help!

I was promptly frogmarched back to my father, who had it explained to him that it would be very nice if he would perhaps play with the Lego, with his daughter, with the Lego that he had, of course, bought FOR his daughter, hadn’t he?

I remember, from the time, the bouncing between my parents that day (mostly because OMGSQUEELEGOSQUEE); as an older child / adult I’ve come to appreciate the real humour of the incident. Poor Dad, just wanting to play with the Lego he’d really bought for himself, on the excuse of having a four year old.

As far as I’m concerned, one of the advantages of being an adult is that I’m allowed to act like a child if I want to. Tobermory and I spent a day of our honeymoon at Legoland Windsor. We elected not to go on any of the rides in the end – it was a pleasant day walking around in the sunshine, we squeed at Miniworld, and spent far too long in the Lego store.

There was a child of about six in the store while we were there. He came in, and promptly lost his tiny little mind in utter glee – “look theres the! and the! and the!!! and!!!! and look!!!!!! andtheandthis!!! and look Mum this!!!! LOOOK!!!!!!! and eee! and the eee!!! eeee loook!!!!!”

You get the drift. His parents were looking a bit shamefaced, though I don’t understand why, so I commented fairly loudly that it was lovely to see such a happy kid. Hopefully they heard.

So, Tobes and I spent about, oh, forty five minutes in the store. We came home with the Police station, the current one. It won’t be the same as the one I remember, but I’m pleased to have it.

And, uh, we bought the Fire Station too. It just didn’t all fit in the luggage. My mother in law is posting the rest home.

(We landed safely. International travel is BORING with a capital BORING, we both have jetlag and wah.)

We went to see the vicar tonight. As he’s doing the wedding-which-isn’t-a-legal-wedding, this is somewhat simpler than it may otherwise be. Nothing we have to answer or do for legal reasons, just paperwork that the church requires him to complete before marrying us.

Of course, the topic of religion came up, because, well, this is a wedding in a church. Despite my stated ambivalence, it’s something that was important to Tobermory’s parents – family tradition involves Marrying In A Church, and while neither of us are particularly religious, seeing as the Parents are paying, bowing to their tradition seemed… reasonable. It’s Church of England, after all; they aren’t exactly known for being hard nosed or strict.

I have been very conflicted on this, I will admit. Having left my childhood faith, religion in general left a sour taste; Tobes isn’t a religious person at all*, and the closest I can come to adequately explaining my own opinions on the topic is “It’s… complicated.” Originally I completely refused to even consider the idea. I subsequently realised how important it was for Family Tradition reasons, and conceded that maybe with a few concessions, I could possibly think about doing it. Tobermory has, bless him, mostly left me to it; has listened to me rant and rave, calmly offered alternate opinions, pointed me at websites, and occasionally smacked me upside the head with a “no, you idiot, CofE doesn’t work like that!” stick.

So, church wedding, conducted by vicar. This meant leaving spaces in the ceremony for religious things to occur.

I wrote our ceremony myself, with Tobermory’s agreement. I gave it to the vicar, with a request to re-write it in his own words**, leaving various blanks saying things like [Prayer] and [Blessing] because I knew they were required.

So, we talked tonight, the topic of How Does Mahal Feel About Religion arose, Mahal promptly burst into tears. Partly jetlag; I do generally avoid bursting into tears when religion is discussed. Well, you know, I generally avoid bursting into tears regardless of the topic, but religion being the topic at hand, I generally avoid crying over that too. I pointed out that, mostly as a result of my life/religious choices, the only people in my family who speak to me are my mother and maternal grandmother; and that while I do have time for the idea of whatever higher power you choose to worship, I have very little time for religion. There is a place for faith. I sort of vaguely acknowledge that there may be a higher power, somewhere, but I’m not willing to speculate any further than that. Provided I attempt to be a decent person, I figure any deity that matters will be capable of looking into my heart and working out whether I’m worth caring for.

The vicar’s a nice man, I’m jetlagged and emotional, I’m getting married and emotional, I am religiously confused and upset and emotional; call it what you will. He wasn’t pushy; he was kind and understanding. He wasn’t excessively inquisitive, once he realised just how upset the whole discussion of Why I Left Childhood Faith makes me. Or, at least, made me tonight. He wasn’t critical of some of the various ideas that Tobes and I shared about religion in general, some of which I know for a fact would intensely annoy my dear mother. Presumptuous as it is coming from my heathen mouth, I’d judge him a genuine Christian, and a good vicar – he cares about his flock, even people like me who are not (and will not be) part of it.

We talked for the better part of two hours, the vicar and Tobermory and me. Wedding stuff, religion, how-we-met, us-as-at-present-moment, things like that. As we prepared to leave, he asked us to allow him to pray with us.

I’ve walked out of the evening feeling … distinctly less antipathy towards religion. And no, I’m not going to magically make over my ways and start going to church. There isn’t a religion that could tempt me into that. It is complicated, and frankly short of extensive therapy I doubt I will resolve my issues with religion any time soon, because they are deep seated, extensive, and ongoing.

But some part of my conflicted little soul feels easier tonight.

* In fact, he has scathing disdain for the majority of organized religion, and other than a generalized willingness to accept that there is a possibility that Higher Power[s] Of Choice may possibly exist, has no truck with faith or religion at all. I entirely understand and appreciate the position, particularly as he comes to it from a position of EXTENSIVE teaching and research about a large variety of religions and faiths.

** Because I’d lifted quotes and ideas from various websites and such, and some of it was horribly Twee and some of it was gosh darn American, neither of which would sound at all natural emerging from a lovely British vicar.

And, of course, we’re flying into the UK. We leave next Friday and I’m REALLY hoping that the air traffic chaos caused by Iceland’s volcanoes has sorted itself out, because dammit, I want to go to the UK and our wedding. I’m sure this is a selfish miserly attitude, as there are a lot of people stranded in far more important situations than me going on a holiday/wedding, but wah wah, wah wah wah.

We have a week between our landing date and the wedding, so fingers crossed they can get me to the church on time…

Also, I really didn’t realise just how little baggage 20kg is. Tobermory keeps laughing at me – he’s a seasoned traveller, having been flying since well before I was even born – and finds my constant series of discoveries about packing luggage into the 20kg weight limit quite amusing.

My wedding attire plus suitcase took nine kg’s of my limit. I think I will have to buy a cheap wardrobe when I land, purely to wear for a month and discard when we’re departing for home again..