honeymoon

This past month we went on a honeymoon. It wasn’t the first time (that happened over 40 years ago) and it’s not going to be the last because from now on we’re going to go on a honeymoon at least twice a year. And why not? It seems to me that honeymoons are far too important to be wasted on newlyweds who have yet to catch on to what’s really involved in being married – let alone why it’s so important to do everything possible to stay that way. And honeymoons can help. That’s because the whole idea of a honeymoon is to give husbands and wives a chance to get away for a little while and spend their time paying attention to each other….paying lots of attention to each other. Unfortunately that’s something that married people often stop doing after a while. Years ago (when I was a much younger married woman) I began watching older married couples in restaurants. You could generally spot them by how bored they looked. They seemed completely disinterested in the other person…as if they had nothing at all to say to one another. And I used to wonder if being married a long time meant that eventually people simply run out of things to talk about. I hoped not. I hoped that I would never end up sitting across from Denny in a restaurant – or any other place - with a bored look on my face because there was nothing else going on between us that was worth talking about. But 40 years of being married has taught me a thing or two about how easy it can be for life to get in the way of the things that matter the most. Unless we're careful. And now that we've both been retired for a while it's clear we need to be real careful. I think honeymoons are one way to do that. So we spent a couple of days hidden away in a secluded cabin nestled in the rolling hills of southern Wisconsin -- only 60 miles away from home! And we're going to do it again, because in addition to being every bit as romantic as our first honeymoon, this time we found that because we know each other so much better than we did before it was even nicer being alone together!