The Wedding Story

Life was an adventure and I enjoyed my freedom

I never thought I’d get married. For real, you know, like parents or any of those grown-up friends you have. You know, the ones who are secure with each other, who know they have a future together.

I never harboured secret dreams of a long white dress, which underneath the layers of virginal fabric, concealed sartorial devices designed to occult one’s physical imperfection from the photographer’s lens. Not even as a child did I dream of becoming someone’s wife, cooking and cleaning for a man, making the home pretty with arrangements of fresh flowers. My dreams were of going to dark Africa to help Doctor Schweitzer with his patients. At one point I even wanted to become a catholic nun, even though I’m not catholic. My childhood role models were Pippi Long Stockings, at age six. At eight Mary Poppins, and at nine Mary Quant. At age eleven I dreamed of being an interior decorator and running my own business.

Maybe my anomaly, or reluctance to fulfil my female role in accordance to society’s standard, was acquired through my own observations. When I was five, my older half-sister declared she’d never marry. I spent primary school in a single-sex class, but after school, I played exclusively with the boys in my neighbourhood. While girls were constricted by frills, lace and ribbons, my hair was short and I wore sneakers and jeans. I had a bicycle and enjoyed as much freedom as the boys and played adventure games. One day at school, when I was seven, a group of girls in my class started talking about the wedding dress their mothers were saving for them, to wear on their wedding day.

It occurred to me then and there; I’d never seen such a dress in my mother’s closet. What she did have, was a fuchsia negligee I liked to dress up in, pretending to be a seductress from a thousand Arabian nights. When I enquired about her wedding dress my mother’s green eyes narrowed. She didn’t have one, she snapped. She wore a little black dress to the civil ceremony after all, it was the sixties and my father’s second marriage.

As for me, later in life I was proposed to, by three different men. The first was a Muslim diamond dealer in Bangkok. He approached me in the cocktail bar of the Hilton, while I was on a stopover to Australia. The second proposal was more romantic, as the young man got on his knees and spoke quite passionately. Unfortunately, a week later we discovered our friend in common was pregnant with his child. We never discussed marriage after that. But while our friend eventually had the baby and never spoke to him again, we remained good friends. The third time a man asked if I wanted to be his wife, was in my kitchen. I was preparing an avocado vinaigrette for a convalescing Acquired Brain Injury patient. He had a way with words: “How many camels do your parents want in exchange for your hand in marriage?”

In hindsight the Muslim diamond dealer seemed like the best bet. Though, as I drifted through my twenties, I didn’t concern myself too much with such thoughts. Life is too exciting a place to be in, with so much to do and experiment, a lifetime is hardly enough to do it all. I did think of getting married once, when I turned thirty. I asked the musician, my live-in partner of five years, how about it? He said he wasn’t ready to commit. Two weeks later, I was on a plane to Europe. We never broke up, I simply never went back. I stayed in Switzerland, where I’d grown up, through most of the nineties. We wrote friendly letters to each other and bit by bit, he packed my belongings into boxes and sent them overseas.

Life was an adventure and I enjoyed my freedom. I wasn’t hurt or disappointed. I was relieved, because deep inside, I knew the musician wasn’t capable of the love I deserved. I also thought if I ever got married, it would be later in life. Once I became wiser and more accomplished. Unlike my high school friend, M., I didn’t feel the urge to validate myself as a woman through the experience of procreation. This gave me the freedom to concentrate on my career, pursue my interests and nurture a rewarding social life. I fell in and out of lust without the added pressure of trying out each male specimen as a potential breeder, or going out on dates with a hidden agenda.