I think I just missed our anniversary.

I mean, well…..I KNOW I did!

It was January something…..not sure when exactly, but I can find out.

We have a marriage certificate/license thing somewhere.  

I saw it in the cabinet once filed under MISCELLANEOUS.

Oh well, I’m not gonna worry about it, we have another one in October sometime, I think the last part.

 

We didn’t mean to get married, my high school boyfriend and me.  

In fact, we both swore never again.

We both decided that marriage had a way of changing people from the person you were nuts about to the person that made you nuts!

So, no marriage for us.

 

But, shortly after our non-marriage relationship began, a problem arose.

Well, two actually.

 

One was from my nurse-brain.  

What if something happened to him and he ended up in the ICU? Unable to talk?

If I wasn’t his wife, I’d have no legal rights to see him or speak for him.

It was a heartbreaking thought and it scared me.

 

The other perfectly understandable problem was greeting cards.

I was a card sender…..a Hallmark junkie.

I loved finding cards with all the right words for family and friends.  

But there was my problem.

Every time I’d want to send my darling man a greeting card, the best verses were written on the HUSBAND cards!

 

That bothered me.

 

It bothered me so much that finally I suggested we get married so I could buy husband cards.  

I promised it would change absolutely nothing other than I could buy and give husband cards.

Made sense to me.

 

I don’t think Lobo was real keen on the idea, he’d struck out with marriage twice before and didn’t want a third time but…..I promised and well, he believed me I guess!

 

And so, we decided to go to Maui and get married.

 

One of my close nurse girlfriends had a condo in Maui and she wanted to be our wedding planner.

She was back and forth to Maui often so, what the heck?

We told her our dream and she took it from there.

 

We wanted to be married standing in the Pacific Ocean.

We figured what better place?

The Pacific was magic to us both so if we stood in it, how could it be anything but well…..magic? (and it has been.)

 

We wanted to be married by a real Hawaiian minister and we wanted a photographer but mostly we wanted privacy and sigh…..ROMANCE.

 

The morning of our wedding it rained…..and I cried but was told by my girlfriend’s Hawaiian boyfriend Laloopa, that rain on a wedding day was a great omen.

 

It stopped raining and I stopped crying.

 

When it was time, Lobo and I walked out and into the water.  

We walked along ankle deep, hand in hand and said our vows to each other in private.

The photographer was there but just as we asked, he was discreet and kinda followed along behind us hidden by the Palm trees.

The Hawaiian minister, whom we called The Big Kahuna,  was waiting for us in the water.  

He said beautiful words to us and sang us a song that his grandmother sang to him and then pronounced us man and wife.

Our two best friends were there with us, plus my wedding-planner girlfriend and Laloopa.

There were two other friends from the hospital who just happened to be vacationing on Maui at the same time who also celebrated with us.

It was perfect, just as we hoped for…..romantic and fun, that was us.  

 

Laloopa brought pork that had been buried in the sand on hot coals and cooked all night.

I’d heard about this but never had any desire to eat from a poor whole pig whose been buried in the ground, covered with sand and roasted over coals all night long.  

And yep, I eat bacon but I don’t recognize it so much, it’s kinda pork in disguise.  

Bacon doesn’t look like a little fat piggy with ears, snouts and curly tails. 

It’s just bacon. 

 

He also brought seafood that he dove for and caught himself.

I mean, how could you not be kinda in awe of that and I WAS, but…..I don’t know…..it just kinda did something to my appetite.

 

The rest of the food was salads and condiments that came from the local grocer and to be honest…..they were my favorite! 

 

Laloopa was native Hawaiian. 

He was an awesome man, friendly like we’d known him forever and a good sport to put up with half a dozen (kinda crazy) people he’d never met before….”howlies” from the mainland no less.

 

One evening he was telling us a story and it had something to do with two or three days.  

In Hawaiian speaking English, the word three came out like “tree.”  

So he said something about “two-tree days” and Bingo he had a new nick-name. 

For the rest of the trip we called him, “Two-Tree”. 

And when we returned home to California, we bought two trees, planted them side-by-side in the front yard and yep, we named them “Two Trees.”  

Honest!  

 

The whole thing was like a dream.  

All perfect.

Well there was one little glitch.

It wasn’t legal.

Nope.

We were married in the eyes of each other but not legally and….. WHY you might wonder?

Well, let me tell you…..

 

About 2 weeks before we were getting ready to go to Maui, my sweet man decided that just for the heck of it he’d figure out what was going to happen to our tax status after we were married.

We were both single-head-of-household at that time which I don’t think is anything in today’s world but it was a big deal back then.  

A sizeable money saver.

According to his figures…..we were gonna PAY if we got married 2 1/2 months before that year was over.

We weren’t gonna RECEIVE…..we were gonna GIVE…..to the tune of over $8,000.00

Now, that’s a LOT of Hallmark cards!!

 

I went to work that morning crying.

My Maui wedding…..ruined!

 

I was crazy in love with him and it was my big idea anyways but $8,000.00?

For 2 1/2 months?

Who would do that?

Not Lobo!

 

But, by the time we hooked up that evening, we both had a piss-on-it attitude.

 

We’d go to Maui, have our beautiful wedding, just not sign any papers.

We’d wait til January when the year was beginning, take a ride up to Lake Tahoe and do it legally then. 

(And THAT my friends is how Bob Fone thinks.  Screw the rules, we’d do it our way!) 

And, we did exactly that.

 

We had our Maui wedding in October and then one January morning, we woke up and went to Tahoe.

It was snowy, cold winter.

We stopped at the very first Chapel that advertised quickie marriages.

We were greeted and ushered into a small, bare room with a window, 2 chairs and a TV which was on. 

Nothing chapel about it.

 

A friendly, smiley woman dressed in big furry chucka boots, winter coat and gloves, looking like she was getting ready to be in the Iditarod Dog Sled races walked in.

I kinda expected a team of dogs to follow in behind her!

We explained we didn’t want the ceremony, just the legal paper.

That one kinda threw her.

She said she HAD to do the ceremony.

She had to say the words to make it legal.

I explained again that we didn’t want her words, they’d ruin the words we already had.

Just the license please.

She was quiet for a moment, thinking.

Then she left promising she’d be right back.

And she was, with a small stool in hand.

She told us to stay put on the chairs and just to do as she said.

 

She put her stool a bit in front of us with her back facing us like we were on a bus.

She began to mumble.

We couldn’t really make out what she was saying but then she yelled back to me that I should say, “I DO.”

I said it.

Some more mumbling and then it was Lobo’s turn….. “I DO.”

She popped up off the stool, turned with a smile and pronounced us man and wife.

That was January something, not sure when exactly…..but I can find out and well, if I forget, we have another one in October…..sometime.