Love and Marriage

LOVE AND MARRIAGE

“The same high standards that lead to our 'search' for love, also set us up for disappointment, failure and the impossibility of a satisfactory conclusion."    Francesc Núñez

Let me take you back to 1945. It was summer time, the war was over!  Finally, all was well with the world again.   That is to say: it was for everyone else, but not for me.

I was twelve years old, and not the prettiest young girl on the street, LS had that classification. LS not only had a pretty face but she had beautiful curly hair in a gorgeous chestnut colour that everyone (especially me) envied.  Me, I had an O.K. face but the most dreadful straight-mousy-hair that no one envied, so I was the smart one, whatever that meant.  What I wanted was to be the pretty one because I was in love, desperately and unrequitedly so. 

Before you laugh at my dilemma let me apprise you of the information I have garnered from Mr. Google:

“Falling in love is an emotional upheaval at any age, but for adolescents the feelings are likely to be even more difficult to manage. Teenage bodies and brains are maturing at a rate not experienced since infancy”.   (Braams et al., 2015; Suleiman & Harden, 2016).

Who, you might ask, was the object of this undying affection?  A boy from school?  A neighbour?  No.  There would have been hope if either of these were the one.  My love was, as I said, unrequited and would always be so.  He was a blood relative! And to add insult to injury he was at least nine years older than me.

No doubt you’ve heard of J.C. haven’t you.  Well he wasn’t that one.  His name was Johnnie.  Johnnie Carter to be precise, he was a half-cousin. He was the son of my father’s half-sister.  There was a definite closeness between the two families, evidenced from the time of my parents’ wedding.  Their formal wedding picture shows the young Johnnie and his sister as the bride’s attendants. 

From one year later when I came into being, until that miserable day of Johnnie’s wedding I had been aware of this glorious creature.  Naturally, my awareness had been pretty low key until my mysterious hormones started raging.  Then, I can recall spending hours imagining and thinking and dreaming of what life would be like if he would only notice me.  Whilst I can honestly say I never-ever got any indication that he even knew that I existed, it didn’t stop me from wishing.

Imagine then how I felt; the war had ended and the very first celebration that we were all invited to was the wedding of Johnnie and his bride.

Money and clothing were still in short supply, nevertheless, Mum had probably scrounged a few bob together and bought LS and me matchy-matchy dresses for the big day.

Everyone was dressed and ready to leave for the big event.  Except me!  As always, my straggly hair was causing me problems. Remembering who I would be seeing, I wanted it to look glamorous, something along the lines of Rita Hayworth’s luscious tresses.  Conversely, it wanted to do what it always did: just hang there!  It was then that I had the brilliant idea to wear a “Snood”.  Snoods were the fashion item of the day. Usually crocheted but occasionally made of fabric. 

We didn’t actually have a snood, no one in our house could crochet, but always inventive I found some fabric (more correctly described as torn up rag) and proceeded to style myself a snood.  As I tossed this back and forth, I could imagine the voluminous masses of hair that hid beneath.

Mum, on the other hand, had no imagination.  She didn’t see it that way. She insisted I take it off, I insisted I wouldn’t!

Well, as we all know, time waits for no one so we all (including the snood) left to attend the wedding.

Looking back, it’s easy to see what happened next.  Mum was desperate to have me remove the offending hair embellishment, so she appealed to the person Mums always appeal to: the friendly non-threatening child’s aunt. In this case Dad’s sister Dorothy, known as Aunt Doll. 

Dear sweet Aunt Doll buttered me up like a piece of toast.  Told me how she could make my hair look so amazing and wonderful.  Of course, she lied.  No one could do that!  But I let her remove the offending snood and apply her non-existent hairdressing skills via a curling iron.  The results of which can be clearly seen in the group wedding photo.

I ask you: look at the picture, is it any wonder he still didn’t notice me!

Preceding Planetary Pandemics

THE YIN AND THE YANG OF PRECEDING PLANETARY PANDEMICS.

Today, my dear Covey, no doubt because of what is transpiring around us, my mind is drawn towards the number of pandemics, plagues and pestilences that preceded our existence on this planet.

There’s a tremendous amount of hope and optimism, when you consider that in order for me to be alive and writing this joyous but rather mundane blog, my genes (and yours) have survived ALL of the most gruesome and devastating plaques that the world has suffered.
No doubt, prior to A.D. there have been many diseases that have wiped out populations but the first one I learned about in school was the Black Death or Bubonic Plaque. This nasty little pandemic was said to have been a little gift that arrived on Britain’s shores in 1348 via a travelling seaman.
Now, whether our Covey were residents of Blighty at that time, only LB the genealogical master would know, but I’m presuming we were. That pandemic like any other yin and yang caused a lot of changes in its wake. It ended a hundred-year war, the shortage of labour raised wages and ended serfdom in England. Hence, our forebears who had survived, no longer had to do all that wartime fighting, their standard of living rose and their offspring went on to a bigger and better life.
However, due no doubt, to a lack of hand washing and no observance of physical distancing after it wiped out half the population, it came back for a few more, less-severe population cutbacks throughout the centuries until the Great Plaque of London 1665-1666.

Carting off the dead from London streets

Not that I’m implying any direct connection here, but it’s interesting to note another bit of yin and yang to show that it is possible to achieve great things when in isolation: During this plague, Isaac Newton was a student at Cambridge University when the University closed down as a precautionary measure. So, Newton did a bit of social and physical distancing at home while he figured out the Law of Gravity and developed a few theories on calculus and optics. Can’t say he wasted his time! 

So then, to jump many hundreds of years we should consider our grandparents, or great-grandparents for some, and the Spanish Flu of 1918. This terrible influenza lasted for two years and killed MILLIONS of people worldwide. Many people, our mother and father and grandparents all lived through and survived that terrible period, yet I don’t recall anyone ever speaking about it.  So perhaps I shouldn't be!

Nevertheless . . .

They survived and so shall we. It’s in our genes.