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A Day Without Bite

Not a June Bride

by Daria Sockey in Marriage on Monday, June 27, 2011 6:00 AM

Wedding invitations that invariably come at this time of year always make me pause to remember my own wedding and early days of marriage.

First memory: how little I relished my own wedding preparations. After picking out a great dress and planning a lovely liturgy in an exquisite church, I kind of lost interest. The ten-thousand other things that remained to be done filled me with dismay.

Much as I looked forward to being married, I wasn’t sure I could survive getting married. My sense of injustice was keen as I watched bridal couples in historic-setting films trip merrily forth from the church, hop into the waiting carriage, and drive away on their honeymoon, leaving the well-wishers to disperse with neither chicken dinner nor chicken dance. Alas that I was born several centuries too late.

I was too frazzled to even enjoy that lovely liturgy. I recall sitting there during the homily. Our celebrant was Father Walter Ciszek,S.J., a delightful and saintly man whose cause for beatification is now progressing.

“This must be a wonderful sermon,” I thought in a sleep-deprived daze. “Maybe I can ask someone later on what he said.”

Luckily I got to hear the extended version that same weekend, when Father gave us a wedding gift of a personal two-day retreat on married spirituality. Thanks to Father Ciszek’s wonderful teachings, I was able to put the trauma of planning a wedding behind me and start my new life as a married woman full of joy and serenity.

The honeymoon in Orlando didn’t hurt either.

Settled in our tiny apartment in a suburb of New York City, I found that being married was indeed much more fun than getting married. Even the things that are not supposed to be fun.

Take cooking, for example. My repertoire was limited to scrambled eggs, hot dogs, and chocolate chip cookies. During my last year at home, my poor mother periodically would haul a passive-resistant daughter into the kitchen to teach her something. Within five minutes, we were at an impasse between her wish that I do exactly as she said and my desire to try things my own way. And that would be it until the next doomed attempt.

Once married, I was delighted to find that you really can learn from a cookbook, with only the minimal collateral damage required to drive home the lesson about using the oven timer. It also helped to have a husband who liked to eat just about anything, or at least was really good at pretending.

Not having enough money — that fabled marriage stressor — turned out to be another adventure. Saturday mornings found us in that great open air market known as Garage Sales. And don’t get me started about those treasure hunts on Tuesday nights, when the well-to-do of Westchester County put out some really nice stuff for the Wednesday morning trash pick up.

Then there were the days before payday, when we’d ransack every coat pocket and reach between sofa cushions to add enough stray change to the single dollar in Bill’s wallet to buy ourselves a carton of ice cream. Ice cream never tasted so good since that time.

Best of all our newlywed adventures was the very reason I was so desperate for that carton of ice cream: I was pregnant within a month of the wedding.

This situation horrifies anyone who thinks married couples need a year or three to “get to know each other.” Bill and I, on the contrary, had a sense of accomplishment—of really getting on with what marriage was all about. 

Anyway, ice cream was extremely soothing to my first-trimester tummy. I left size four behind forever, and never looked back. Nine months and four days after we two became one, little Theresa made the one into three. If that sounds vaguely theological, well, it’s supposed to. Marriage is like a “Hidden Pictures” puzzle. The Trinity, the Eucharist, the Redemption, the Church …it’s all there to discover.

—Bill and Daria Sockey have been married 31 years. They honeymoon at home in Pennsylvania. Find Daria online at Coffee and Canticles.

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