5 minute read
One very lonely wedding night
In 1977, two pragmatic intellectuals found each other through a matchmaking service. True romance caught up to them soon after.
BY ROBERT HACKETT
Angelika and I spent our wedding night over 5,000 kilometres apart. We did not meet again until the following year. And had you asked me my bride’s full name the day after our wedding, I would have got it wrong.
Our story began when Angelika (“Ika”), a high school language teacher in Kingston, Ontario, decided to buy a piano. Searching the classified ads under “P” in the local newspaper, she came across Prestige Introduction Bureau, a matchmaking service. Sounded intriguing.
Not yet having found a suitable partner, she signed up.
So had I, after months of a hermit-like existence studying for graduate school exams at Queen’s University. No Internet in 1977!
Ika received calls from five gentlemen and went out on the town every evening for a week. The morning after one date, a young girl in her class piped up, “Miss, Miss! You went out with my brother last night!”
Gulp. Quickly gathering her wits, Ika replied, “Yes I did, but I won’t again, because he smokes.”
Ultimately, I was the lucky fellow selected, evidently because I used the word “likewise” during our initial phone chat, making me sound suave and sophisticated – at least to a language teacher! As a brilliant tactician, I avoided mentioning beer-swilling nights with my fellow political science apprentices in smoky local taverns.
The following year, we moved in together. We knew we’d marry, but we procrastinated. With family in BC, Ontario and Europe, we couldn’t decide when and where to tie the knot.
Until December 15, 1980. Flipping through the income tax guide, I came across a “marriage exemption” clause. If the higher-earning partner made less than $400 between the date of marriage and the end of the year, they could claim their mate as a dependent for the whole year.
Seriously? That would save us about $850, enough in those days for a basic honeymoon. Ika asked a colleague who taught business if this was for real. “Yup,” she said, “that’s why accountants get married in December!”
Problem was, I had already booked a flight from Toronto on December 18, to visit my parents in Vancouver for Christmas. Ika was to leave soon afterwards for Germany to spend the holiday with her beloved grandmother. And Ontario law required a three-day waiting period between obtaining a marriage licence and the wedding.
That deadline was just manageable if everything went like clockwork!
Those days were intense, a scramble. Licence, arranging time off teaching (the principal agreed, provided Ika promised not to get married every day), Justice of the Peace, and two friends as witnesses in the morning, a small impromptu midday reception in the grad student pub, a three-hour bus trip to Toronto to catch my evening flight.
Some friends were to meet me at Vancouver airport and then repair to a bar for a Yuletide beverage. They didn’t know I was now a married man – long-distance calls were prohibitively expensive in those prehistoric years before cell phones. I eagerly anticipated breaking the news.
Right after I left, unbeknownst to me, Ika did the paperwork to change her surname to that of her new husband. We hadn’t had time to discuss nomenclature!
My flight to Vancouver seemed endless. Delayed departure – student charter airlines were low priority for take-off clearance, apparently. Strong headwinds, unscheduled stop to refuel. No decent meal, let alone a sumptuous wedding feast.
It was all so sudden, almost overwhelming. I’m in a new social and legal category. What does that mean? Were my motives entirely honourable, or was I unduly influenced by the possibility of capturing a typist for my forthcoming 900-page dissertation? Like television’s Basil and Sybil Fawlty, would we end up feeling “manacled together”?
Above all, I’m missing Ika already. Terribly.
By the time the plane finally touched down, my friends had long given up waiting. I strode to the carousel where luggage was sluggishly appearing. There’s time, I thought, to dash off for a quick snack.
When I returned, most of the passengers and all the baggage had disappeared.
At that point, I lost it. I scampered up to the last fellow straggler, a woman at the empty carousel, and jabbered, “Where’s my suitcase? Where’s my suitcase? I just got married today and now I can’t find my suitcase!”
Startled, the lady gawked at me as if I’d just escaped from an institution.
“Suitcase?” she exclaimed. “Where’s your wife?!”
What could I say? That maybe she’s hiding in the suitcase?
Some questions just can’t be answered.
Ika and I reunited in January when school in Kingston resumed, then honeymooned (together!) in Baja California during spring break. Eventually we settled in Burnaby and raised two wonderful daughters. Karina preceded our post-retirement move to Powell River, and Melanie is raising a delightful toddler.
By the way, I located my suitcase in the airline’s tiny corner office. Ika typed my monster thesis on a primeval word processor.
And yes, she did find a piano.
