We Had a Proper Honeymoon and It Almost Killed Us (or, How Not to Get Kidnapped in Alabama)

Ben:

We’re back!

(If you consider returning to a blog with only 11 entries in it after a 2-year hiatus something announcement worthy.)

When we began our brief yet ambitious project to blog together as a couple we hadn’t anticipated that college, kids, job changes, career startups, talent honing, missing West Highland White Terriers, and near-death experiences would be so annoyingly time consuming. Now that the whitewater rapids of our shared life experiences have finally spewed us into less white, less watery, and less rapid-y channels, we've turned our attention back to this tiny plant in the corner of the internet to water it with some more of our words.

Our first blog post touched on our honeymoon, which was fitting because it coincided with our getting married. Given our lean financial state at the time, we thought it best to kick the kids out of the house and enjoy what could only be described as a week-long sleepover with one’s best friend. (Our first blog goes into it a little more.) After a couple years of un-fun and hard work, we found we had a surplus of time, money, and stress, and we leaped at the chance to do a proper honeymoon.

In the late spring/early summer of 2016, Esther and I vacationed in the unassuming coastal town of Panama City Beach, Florida. It's steeped in charm and wonderful people, and we had an amazing time. Sadly, we had to drive through Alabama to get there and no one should have endure that, but it was a small price to pay considering. (Apologies to Alabamans, but seriously, you people need to grow proper trees, build a few new houses and for the love of all that is holy, dump all that rusted crap on your front lawns! I mean it! The entire state is badly overdue for a scrap metal drive.)

We had a proper honeymoon complete with intimate restaurants, beautiful vistas, and an ocean which has the magical ability to pull your worries out to sea. However, if you’re not careful, it will pull you out to sea too. We learned the hard way that calm sea surfaces don’t necessarily equate to calm sea depths. One minute we were bobbing merrily along on our body boards, and the next we were bobbing terrifyingly far from shore with no idea how we’d gotten there. Well, calls to the fire department, the police department, and the coast guard and an hour or so later, we were finally plucked from the ocean by, of all things, a Sea-Doo rental owner/operator from two miles up the coast.

Buffeted by our harrowing near death experiences, we returned home to be brought back down to earth by unimpressed kids and dogs who were infinitely more concerned about what was for dinner than how we survived driving through Alabama and back.

And now, I’ll hand it off to my lovely and talented wife, Esther.

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Esther:

Ben isn’t kidding when he says our honeymoon almost killed us. If you’re trying to think of ways to grow closer as a couple, I recommend sharing the risk of death. It works for army buddies all the time, think what it can do for you!

When it was just the two of us trapped in a life-threatening situation for what felt like hours, only what was important stayed afloat. Everything else sank quickly away. All that mattered was that Ben stay alive, and (to an oddly secondary degree) that I stay alive, too. But that we be together, no matter what happened. And together we finally made it through those back roads of Alabama and the fear of death by backwoods serial killer.

We can joke about it now but it really was the most afraid and helpless I’ve ever been. We hadn’t been married two full years, and now the man of my dreams had been swept out so far from me I couldn’t see him. At one point I thought he’d drowned. Not able to swim myself, I was kept on the water’s surface by a thin slab of foam.

When a wave knocked me off of it and I went under, I realized a number of things: (1) it would be too comically tragic for our marriage to end this way, dying on our honeymoon, (2) drowning wouldn’t be as terrible a death as I’d always imagined, and (3) … oh. The body board was strapped to my wrist. Pulling myself back onto the board was easily managed.

From the outside, it would probably seem silly that we went body surfing in the Gulf of Mexico on a red flag day, especially since one of us can’t swim, but it’s in keeping with the way Ben and I tumble through life. We’re equal parts preparation and madcappery, and it’s as comfortable as an oversized sweater, as thrilling as a sale on cheese.

But seriously, do not listen to your GPS if it tries to route you through the back roads of Alabama. You stay on the widest roads you can find and you keep driving until you hit the state line.