The love of my life is Doug Barr. He was born and raised in Victoria, British Columbia, and I in the Seattle area. We met on 7 April 2001 at the Scottish Cultural Centre in Vancouver BC, where a very famous Scottish Gaelic singer, Cathy-Ann MacPhee, was performing. We had our first date in Seattle the next weekend and on it went.
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| October 2001, Whistler. See the bunny ears? |
One thing that you have to know about Doug is that the literal meanings of words are very important to him. We have never been ‘boyfriends’ because we are definitely not boys anymore. I adopted the alternative title for myself of Potential Pre-Husband.
When I met Doug, he was working for the Royal Bank of Canada. He held several positions there, and the last was the worst. It involved early morning shifts on the weekends, which were the only times we had together. One particular Sunday morning - and I mean morning - I helped with us getting up an dressed and drove him to work. We both smoked at the time, (we’ve quit - SHUSH!) and so were having a cigarette in the parking lot before he went inside.
He put his hand on my shoulder and said softly “Thank you for getting me here this morning.”
I said “That’s what Potential Pre-Husbands are for!”
“That’s a really long title.” he said.
“You’re the one who doesn’t like ‘boyfriend’.” I quipped.
“I think of you as my fiancé.” he said.
“I WILL!” I answered.
And we were theoretically engaged. We didn’t speak of it again for years. After all, legal marriage wasn’t available to us and neither of us have any interest in empty gestures.
Then, on July 20th, 2005, Canada legalised same-sex marriage nation-wide. Our close friends Geoff and Joe who are American decided to have a wedding ceremony in Vancouver, though it wouldn’t have any force back in the States. They arranged a lovely ceremony on the upper deck of a harbour cruise boat, and afterward, we headed out into English Bay to enjoy the annual fireworks competition overhead and pretend it was for our friends.
Enjoying the views and each other we strolled the decks. The muzak was light jazz, which neither of us like and Doug turned to me and said “Tell me at our reception we’re not going to have...” I didn’t let him finish “No. No light jazz.” And that was the second time we talked about our wedding.
In the intervening ten years before the United States got around to recognizing our fundamental right to marry, many things happened. Doug decided to give post-secondary education a try for the first time. As someone with ADHD which remained undiagnosed until his mid-30s, it had never seemed a realistic goal before. I released my first solo CD which is a mountain of hard work.
Then, in 2013, I was diagnosed with Type II diabetes. Doug got me through the initial shock, lifestyle changes, and self-education. When things were calm again, on a certain Sunday before I drove home to Seattle, we had dinner out and I broached the subject.
“Honey, I’m OK, we’re OK, and we’ve got this now. But, if true disaster befell me, you wouldn’t be able to take me in because of that border. In the eyes of the law, we’re just friends.” I said.
“We should start fighting about the guest list.” he answered and went back to enjoying his hot pot. It was getting cold, and the man is nothing if not practical.
I was one of the founding Board members of Slighe nan Gaidheal, Washington’s Scottish Gaelic Language and Cultural Society and had served continuously since its beginning in 1997. Our terms were three years long, and so when I was up for reelection in 2012, I had announced that it would be the last term I sought. I had all these things I wanted to do in my life that weren’t making any progress and part of the reason was the 10+ hours of volunteer work for the society every week.
Right on cue, I retired from the Board of Slighe nan Gaidheal and marriage became legal for us in the United States in 2015. I supposed that’s really where the journey to our handfasting, and on to our wedding began.
Forming a cross-border family is trickier than you might imagine. Deciding where each part of the process will happen is fraught with politics. It’s even more complicated when the marrying parties are of different religions, with one of them having been raised by evangelical atheists.
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| Rev. Judith Laxer ties the knot |
But we managed it in the end. We were handfasted (formal betrothal in my religion) in Seattle on 2 October 2019, and cast the spell together which said “let all things be put in motion so we are ready to marry on 3 October 2020.”
Of course, we naively thought it would happen as planned at the Scottish Cultural Centre in Vancouver BC where we first met. But no.
The “all things put in motion” apparently included providing extensive material assistance to a parent transitioning into care, an extremely dramatic real estate deal to close my mother’s estate after 20 damn years, a global pandemic, a closed border, and re-planning the wedding four times as rules changed.
I guess the moral of this story is that people in love can endure incredible trials to finally make to their Happily Ever After day. (we know, it won’t all be happy - SHUSH!) Believe in Love, and in each other, and anything is possible.
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| June 1, 2020 Peace Arch Park |
