After watching all the heart-warming Valentines Day TV specials, I've been reminiscing. And it seem to me that Lover's Lane was always full of potholes and paved with self-deceit. Maybe I only feel that way because I had a brief, odd marriage that began on a truly appropriate holiday - Halloween. To add to the charm of the occasion we were married in a funeral home, by a mortician who was also a justice of the peace. We didn't know just who was being laid out at the time, but they had some really spectacular flower arrangements.
Why Halloween? It's a lot better day to begin a marriage than Pearl Harbor Day when some friends of ours were wed. (I have a poem called Ceremony on this very topic.) After all, a masquerade is safer than a war. Besides, don't most starry-eyed couples clutch their masks tightly, as well as their delusions about the true nature of their beloveds?
Ghouls aside, removing our masks is the stuff of true intimacy, the thing that separates infatuation from love. So, what could be more appropriate for a marriage than Halloween when one puts on a mask only to remove it later?
This leaves the nagging question - just what is Valentines Day appropriate for? Staying home and drawing the blinds has always worked well for me....
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