Married, again

What went well and what went wrong

August was hectic and unbelievable and wild and overwhelming from beginning to end.

We started the month by going to Madrid and picking up my new mother-in-law at her layover and flying her back to London. We went one day early and got to walk around a little and try some good food. My favorite stop might have been a microbrewery started by some Venezuelans called Bee Beer.

Looking back, most of the people we met were not from Spain, and many had small businesses in Madrid. It made the city feel pretty incredible, feeling that sense of possibility. There weren’t empty storefronts anywhere. The food and shops were affordable. We even looked up real estate and that was within reach, too, in a way that it’s not been for me in the US or in the UK. I don’t have a lot of experience in places that aren’t constantly struggling under the weight of their own ideas and ideals of wealth. I hope one day I live in a place that’s thriving in the way that it felt like Madrid was thriving.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. After two days in Madrid, we came back and spent a week with family coming into town. We went to Brighton, to London, to Arundel Castle. We took bus tours and walked through gardens. We had afternoon tea and visited Covent Garden. It was an amazing week, if exhausting.

And then there was the wedding. The day before I got a phone call that my hairstylist was sick and I needed to find someone else because no one else at the salon did up-dos.