UN-RENEWING MY VOWS

When Barry and I had been married 11 years, we were given a stupendous opportunity to go to Scotland to work and travel for about two weeks. For months before the trip, I would sit in front of my dial-up internet  and look at Scotland. We kept putting back little bits of our money for this adventure and I researched all of the places we should go. I sent off to Scottish Tourism for all of the brochures they had available. I read every touristy article I could find, kept a notebook of plans and talked about castles and haggis to anyone who would listen to me. One day, in the middle of my research, I had an epiphany. We would renew our vows. In Scotland.

Barry thought renewing our vows would be dumb. He said some stuff about how he meant it the first time, so why should he have to do it again? I, on the other more-correct hand, thought that if you could look someone in the eyes, after 11 years of paying bills together, fighting and diapers and still mean it as much as you did back then, then that would be pretty special. In my mind, renewing our vows was a hearkening back to the days when we were swept away by each other and afraid of nothing. It would be a romantic reminder- and a little castle ambiance would only sweeten the deal. Barry kind of harrumphed about the idea, but I soldiered on. We were doing this.

Let me just take a moment, for the sake of Scottish Tourism, to say that Scotland is every single breath-taking bit as other-worldly as you imagine it is. The grass is even greener than those pictures. The castles are even more magnificent in person. There is history everywhere you put your feet. The food is exquisite, the people are generous, funny and kind.  The Lochs, the shortbread, the history, the tartans, the kilts, the sheep, the trains, the B & B’s, the weather,  the pubs, the Scotch, the pints. It’s all as advertised, on steroids. (Also, the hotels have heated towel racks. Need I say more?)

When our work was done and it was time for us to venture out on our own, I knew just where we would go. I had picked the brains of some locals and had a hot tip about some castle ruins that would be just perfect for the renewing of our also ancient vows.  Barry had started up with a cough, but no matter, I was on a mission. We took a train north to Inverness and checked into the very hotel I had been oogling online. I was out of my mind with excitement. The next morning, after our Scottish Breakfast in bed, he coughed pathetically and said he might need to sleep in. I marched off on my own and scoped out Inverness.  By the time I got back, he was running a slight fever. So naturally,  I hauled him out of bed and marched him off to a “Scottish Prisoner Experience”. This event was such a hilarious debacle that I will save it for another blog post. He hacked and coughed and tried to be a good sport. I announced that tomorrow would be the fateful day that we would be renewing the vows that he didn’t think needed renewal.

Early the next morning,  I drug him, with his lungs hacking and a full-fledged fever, to the nearest car rental place, so we could secure a wagon of destiny to ferry us to our vow renewal portal.  The only car they had left was a stick shift so we took it. If the story just screeched to a halt for you at that last sentence, then you perceived it accurately. Here’s another helpful Scottish travel hint for you: when driving in a country where you must keep the car on the side of the road that you are never allowed to drive on at home, make sure not to burden your brain with the added stress of an opposite hand stick shift.

They asked us if we wanted insurance and we declined. Yeah, ’cause we’re stupid.

The whole “drive in a way that completely violates your training and instincts while shifting gears manually with the hand you never shift with” thing was uh,  a rough go. Poor fevered, coughing, disoriented Barry kept driving dangerously close to the curb and I kept griping about it. He told me to calm down (guys, why why why do you ever ever ever say that to us?) and I kept complaining. We carried on this way for an hour and a half when we finally stopped for a brief respite of fish and chips and “Scotland’s other national drink”, Irn Bru. Back in the wagon of love the coughing clown car experience continued. I squeaked and squawked and definitely made the whole thing worse. Barry finally had enough of my “helping” him drive and yelled at me between coughs to “Shut-up!”.  Not even one millisecond later, he ran that car so hard into the curb that I almost broke a tooth.

We just sat there at the side of the road for a minute. In a fury, I folded my arms across my chest and made my mouth into the thin line that means, “You’re a dead man.” Never in 11 years had he ever yelled at me or ever told me to shut up. He had lost his mind and yelled those horrid words at me and now God was punishing him. When I was growing up, “shut-up” was like a swear word to my mom. No one in my house said it. Ever. I just knew God was so mad at Barry for saying that to me and I was even madder than God was. He coughed some more and got out to assess the damage. He had hit the curb so violently that he had destroyed not one, but two alloy wheels. Not just popped the tires but rendered the wheels themselves useless. He limped the car off the main drag and found a payphone to call the car rental place. They said they would send a tow truck and for us just to wait there.

By this point, we were just barely a mile away from our castle of vow renewal. We were going to be waiting for a while, so he casually asked me if I wanted to just hike out there with him and get it done. Death glare was what he got for an answer. Not only had he ruined this important day that I had been planning for the better part of a year, he had told me to shut up. And I was right, he WAS TOO CLOSE TO THE FLIPPIN’ CURB! No Sirree, buddy. No vows would be renewed anywhere near me that day. Some may even be revoked. I was sure I had a clause about, “if you ever tell me to shut up I will so on and so forth” in the original vows somewhere.

The ride back to the tire fixing place in a Scottish tow truck was beyond pathetic. As we pulled away from my vow renewal hopes and dreams, I seethed.  I still had my hands folded across my chest and the thin line mouth. We did not speak all the way back to Inverness. Barry coughed a bunch more and started in with some shaking and chills, for good measure. Further fun awaited us since we had not purchased the insurance. Remember all those little bits of money we had been saving to fund our Scottish adventure? We had to spend the bulk of it on two brand new Scottish alloy wheels for a car we would never drive again.

Barry managed to scrape enough shekels together to get us a night at an even nicer hotel (I think he was trying to butter me up) and we ate dinner in a lovely hotel restaurant that night. That kind of stuff usually works on me.  I thought I would be noble and forgive him since he had a fever. I decided I would go ahead and renew my side of the vows over our dinner, after all. I swallowed some Guinness and launched into a bunch of things I would have said, had we made it to our desired location that day. He listened quietly and then said “Thanks.” I took another drink and waited for him to offer up his side of the lesser romantic vow renewal. He did not. He just ate his meal, coughed and shook a bunch and that was that. (Sidenote, big heartwork has happened for me since then about me trying to “arrange to be loved”. Yeah, ’cause crazytown.)

When our train arrived back in Glasgow the next day, our dear Scottish friends were there waiting for us. Barry was white as a sheet by then and weak and shaky. Our friends got him to a doctor where he was diagnosed with pneumonia and given some antibiotics. They felt so badly about our misadventure that they collected enough money to pay off our brand new alloy wheels. My Scottish friends are some of the kindest, most generous people I know. I have been back to Scotland since the un-renewing of my vows and I leave a chunk of my heart there every time.

Here’s what I have realized since then about the whole vow renewal thing and a quiet, no-nonsense, devoted man like Barry. When he said he “meant it the first time”, it means he considered it sacred. To rehash it, to re-promise it, to “take another run at it” would cheapen it for him. He meant the words as literal life-binding vows. He meant to fall back on those words in hard times and live his every-day life in a way that reflected the promise he made. In the years after the trip to Scotland, I would see this so clearly in the way he loved me as we walked through some of our hardest years to date. I no longer need those vows renewed, they are not old. They are every day. They are my reality. I am well loved.  I will, however, never drive and/or be driven by a North American in a stick shift on Scottish soil again. This- for me- is a vow.