Gloria's father was delighted that our decision about the style of the reception saved him a great deal of money in terms of the cost of a sit-down dinner. He therefore decided to gift us with the present of a honeymoon in Hawaii. He had arranged our airline tickets, and our stay at a very, very nice hotel, and pick up at the airport by a greeters company. This didn't work out too terribly well: for some reason our flight was delayed slightly, and the greeters company decided that this was too late, and they were presumably into overtime rates, and so they left. Both Gloria and myself are short on experience in terms of vacation travel, and this somewhat threw us, and so it was rather late when we finally were able to get a taxi, and get to the hotel.
I must admit that I did not help matters. Just before we got engaged, I had, basically, lost pretty much my entire life savings in the crash of a financial institution. Therefore, I was extremely nervous about the additional costs to be incurred on this trip, regardless of the fact that the airline and hotel were paid for. I was also rather stressed over the preparations for the wedding, and I didn't deal with any of this particularly well.
We got to the hotel. We got checked in. Stu had booked us the honeymoon suite. Actually, I assume that this particular hotel has several honeymoon suites. But this was a very nice one, tucked in an inside corner of the building, with a balcony looking out over the courtyard. When we got up in the morning, Gloria looked out into the courtyard, which was planted with coconut palms. The winds, fairly constant in Hawaii, were gently blowing, and the trees were moving in the wind. "Oh," said Gloria, "nobody told me about the palm trees dancing!" We will speak more of Gloria's enjoyment of anything to be enjoyed in life.
Now, I have to admit to a major failing on my part. I am infamous, among friends and family, for not being able to remember names. And it's not just names. I can remember very little about the details of people's lives, unless I am actively dealing with them, extensively, in the immediate time period when you ask me about them. When I went away to work on the railroad one summer I forgot my best friend's name, during that time period. I had created a calendar, upon which I had written the names and the dates when I had written to various friends and family members. When I got home, I had to look up that calendar, and look at a date when I recalled I had sent my best friend a letter, in order to remind myself what his name was. That's how bad my infirmity is. I do not do string variables. I frequently say that I am not very good with names, or faces, but I never forget a number. And that is almost literally true. Numbers I remember. Numbers, as far as I am concerned, have meaning. (A fact that Gloria would strongly dispute.) Names are arbitrary, and meaningless, except as variable references.
I blame my mother for this. As I have mentioned, mother made me her confidante. She told me all kinds of gossip, about all kinds of people in the church, and the denomination. She also told me that I could never tell anyone this material. So, I assume I got very good at forgetting it. And anything associated with people. Which makes it difficult these days.
And, if I said that that example was bad, it gets worse. I forgot Gloria's name, on our honeymoon. One morning we had gone to a restaurant to get breakfast. Gloria became interested in a piece of artwork hanging on the wall. When the hostess (whatever the current, non-gender identified term is, these days) came back to inform us that our table was ready, I turned to Gloria, and realized that none of the female names that I could recall were, in fact, correct. So, I just said, "Come." Gloria, knowing that this was not exactly my style, turned to me and said "Come?" All that I could think of to say, in the moment, was "Come, *please*!"
Gloria, when asked why she didn't like travel or vacations, would note that, if you were sitting on a beach, sand got into your embroidery. When pressed, she would also note that she did not like to sit in the sun. This was an understatement. Not only did Gloria not like the sun, the sun definitely did not like her. She got sunburn at the drop of a hat. Sometimes literally. If she was exposed to the sun for any length, she burned very easily, and suffered great pain from it. On another morning in our Hawaiian stay, we had planned to be at a hula demonstration, which took place not far from our hotel, at 10:00 in the morning. On the appointed day, at the appointed time, we went to the display, and enjoyed it. It was only a short demonstration: no more than twenty minutes. However, later that day, and not too much later at that, Gloria's skin started to burn. She had been in the sun for only twenty minutes. She had covered up, mostly. But there was an area, about a foot long, and two inches wide, where the neck of her dress had exposed her neck and shoulders. That area burned. Not just red: it turned a deep and dark purple, in places almost black. We obtained an analgesic burn cream from a pharmacy. I had to apply it with the lightest of touches, putting a large glob of the cream on my finger, and only touching Gloria with the cream itself, so as not to press my fingers on her skin. Even so, it was intensely painful for Gloria. And it had not finished healing, by the time we needed to come home. The skin had started blistering and peeling by then, but the underlying skin was still extremely tender.
As noted, I was not handling any of these problems well. The combined stress gave me a rather blinding headache for a number of the days of our honeymoon. I did not do well. I did not handle the honeymoon, or the headache particularly appropriately. This is my fault, and my fault alone. And it is my fault if Gloria did not enjoy being in Hawaii. We did, in fact, make plans at various times, to get back to Hawaii and have a redo of the honeymoon, at times when Gloria had been able to work on my inability to handle complex situations, and I might have been a bit better able to give her the honeymoon that she deserved. For one reason or another, these plans never came to fruition before Gloria died. Another one of my regrets.
Gloria loved quilting. Let me rephrase that: Gloria loved fabric. Gloria loved textiles, of pretty much any sort. She loved the colors. She loved the colors of fabrics for quilting, and she loved matching fabrics for quilting. She loved purchasing different fabrics, and planning color matches for different block patterns for quilts. But she also loved buying pre-chosen rolls and packages of fabrics for quilting. She loved buying quilt kits. Even if the quilt kit was not a particularly good choice in terms of color. One such, which is still in the stash, is a kit of microfibre fabrics, deliciously soft, in blacks, whites, and primary colours, and so is a rather unsorted and random mix of colors, but which Gloria purchased, because I liked the touch of the fabrics. Gloria was going to make it into a quilt for me. Unfortunately, it never got made.
But another quilt, that never got finished before Gloria died, was one that she was, in fact, designing and starting collecting fabrics for, when we got married. It was a log cabin block quilt. Gloria worked on it, off and on, for pretty much the entire period Of our marriage. She had collected the appropriate fabrics, created the blocks, and pieced the top. However, she had not finished the borders, or the backing, and had not had it quilted, by the time she died. After Gloria died, I was going through the sewing room stash. The girls had put the whole sewing room into a storage locker, as, when they moved me from North Vancouver to Delta, we knew that a sewing room was probably not immediately possible, but none of us were willing to dispose of Gloria stash while she was still unconscious. I looked through all the materials that I could find in the storage locker, looking for the log cabin quilt. I didn't find it. I didn't find it, because the girls had taken it, completed the borders, and then had the quilt quilted. They presented me with the finished quilt at our great-grandson's first birthday party, that summer. Fortunately, towards the end of the party, as I was a blubbering mess after the presentation.
Gloria enjoyed what there was to enjoy of life. Completely. Her first husband once left a movie, which they were watching together (a comedy movie), because Gloria started laughing. Out loud. He actually left the theater, rather than sit beside Gloria while she was laughing. This says something about Gloria, but it also says something about her first husband.
She had told me this story, somewhat apologetically at times, to warn me that she might laugh out loud in certain situations. I didn't care. If Gloria enjoyed herself enough to laugh, I thought that was great. There was no way I was going to be embarrassed by Gloria laughing. Gloria did not laugh at inappropriate times. She did not laugh at inappropriate things. She enjoyed what there was to enjoy. And what's the problem with that?
Sometime later my little brother presented us with some videos of two Monty Python movies. One of them was the movie "And Now for Something Completely Different." Eventually, we played this movie for ourselves. As soon as it started playing, Gloria turned to me and said, "That's the movie!" This was, in fact, the movie that had caused Gloria to laugh out loud, and which her first husband would not sit through, because Gloria was laughing. I was delighted that she loved this movie enough to laugh at it: I love Monty Python, in all its forms. Gloria, was not a particular fan of Monty Python. So, to discover that this particular movie was the one that had caused her to laugh, was a delight to me, as a shared enjoyment.
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Introduction and ToC: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/10/mgg-introduction.html
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