Message from a Honeymoon Car
She took a chance on love and proclaimed her hope to the world. Seven years later, her message still lifts my heart.

The honeymooners must have checked in the same night we did—January 13, 2018. The Second Chance Inn, as I’ll call it, hugged the edge of a dimly lit crescent in Odessa, Texas but could have been anywhere at all people stop on their way someplace better. For the lush pleasures of San Diego, we’d settle for the likes of the Second Chance Inn—garish carpets designed to hide stains; reconstituted eggs at the breakfast buffet. The lobby sported that bowl of waxy green apples that had followed us through Hotel Land ever since we left Toronto. On the way to our room, a mirror image of the last, we joined the usual parade of road-weary families—children begging for a chance to to cut loose in the pool, while parents maneuvered laden carts from which, any minute, a foam pillow, a six-pack of beer or a Hello Kitty suitcase might go flying.
No one we saw had a bridal glow.
It’s been seven years and nearly three weeks since the honeymoon couple took their vows. On our travels through Hotel Land, we must have shared hallways with a few confetti-dusted pairs, but only one ever made their marriage bed in my brain. I can’t tell you their names or picture their faces. All I know about them is the most important thing.
When you travel with a dog, as we did then, you can’t roll out of bed and blow town. Casey needed his walk, and my turn had come to do the honors. The Second Chance Inn opened onto a parking lot rimmed by storefronts for rent, a purveyor of Western boots and a boutique that sold ballgowns for little girls. What looked from a distance like a field proved to be a future construction site where plastic bags fluttered from the branches of a few scrawny trees.
Casey planted his paws on the stony ground. He’d seen the shattered bottles before I did, shards gleaming in the tepid sunlight. Okay, then. Nothing for it but circuits of the parking lot.
Candy wrapper, cigarette butt, dog turd. More of same. I couldn’t wait to see the last of Odessa. Except I wasn’t seeing, not really. How many times had we passed the white sedan, a Subaru, before I noticed the inscription on the rear windshield? Someone had written in a round, careful hand (a woman’s hand, without a doubt), “I don’t think anyone is ever ready but when someone makes you feel alive again it’s kind of worth the risk.”
She could have let a bridesmaid write, “Just married.” She chose to tell the world the short version of her story. Love had wounded this woman, perhaps more than once. Never again, she told herself. Then someone pierced the crack in her armor. She was not about to lose him. I reached my phone and snapped my only memento of our stop at the Second Chance Inn.

When my husband and I were married at 21, both students barely scraping by, we disdained honeymoons and wedding cakes. We took our vows at City Hall, then hosted a passel of friends for a makeshift party. They would have gone hungry if not for the pinwheel sandwiches my parents slapped together that morning. As the last revelers departed, having drained every bottle of Hungarian plonk, we gathered at the kitchen table with our two bemused parental units. Paul and I had known each other for about eight months. Now here we were amid the wine-stained plastic cups, a married couple.
My mother, in philosophical mode, asked why a young couple should marry in the age of living together. Her question only sounded friendly; she had warned me—at length, in a sharply worded letter—that we were anything but ready. If my father-in-law picked up on her true feelings, he had the wisdom not to let on. Marriage, he said, is a public declaration. Any two feckless kids can sign a lease and pool their Beatles LPs. Vows carry the heft of responsibility for this bond you are creating together.

Marriage reminds me of a cross-country road trip. You strap yourself in, surrounded by those who know you best. The older folks waving you off have a pretty good notion what you’ll find between beauty spots. Gas-station sandwiches. Traffic jams in which you wonder how far ahead the accident is and when you can get to a bathroom. Daydreams of an adventure down some other highway, in more congenial company. The day I walked out on my husband with our toddler in my arms, I swore it was for good. I never pictured us at 68, loading the car outside the Second Chance Inn.
Paul and I had no sooner left Odessa than I opened Facebook and posted my photo of the honeymooners’ white Subaru. I never meant to include my thumb. Chalk it up to the excitement of discovery. I had stumbled on a thing of beauty and was not about to lose it.
I‘ve mostly forgotten our tour of the Forbidden City. Pompeii underwhelmed me. The Mona Lisa was a muddy blur seen through a fence of selfie sticks. Yet at the memory of the honeymoon car, tenderness floods me. I reach for the words on its windshield, as if for a half-remembered poem. I hear the silent prayer I sent up to whatever powers there be: Take care of these two. Steady them when they falter. Of all the places I’ve walked on my travels, I never saw one less inviting to the eye than that bedraggled parking lot in a pit-stop town. But I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.
Is anyone ever ready for marriage? Why bother with vows, anyway? If you’ve ever sworn not to risk your heart again, what did it take to change your mind? Let the conversation begin!
I can’t overstate what your comments mean to me. They prove that open-hearted people read my letters to the world and care enough to respond. They show me what moves, amuses and worries you. They nourish my thinking and spark ideas for future posts. I watch for familiar names and notice new ones. Whether you’re an old friend or a first-time visitor, I do my best to answer every comment.
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I thought I'd found that person who I would spend the rest of my life with. Instead, I learned a hard lesson, I'm hoping this time for good, to pay attention to red flags, read and interpret the signals my body was screaming at me until I HAD to pay attention. I made myself wrong for not measuring up to her expectations of what partnership or marriage needed to be. And all the things she wanted weren't things I wanted. And I tried and tried to fit myself into her neatly crafted box, until I just couldn't anymore. And I left. And I'm glad that I did. I'm looking at this from many angles. I loved her deeply. She was, in many ways, the best friend I ever had. But I learned a lesson. The lesson is that what works for one person might not work for the other (in both directions) and no one is to blame. And I kind of love being single. Which is not to say that I'm closed to love. I just have much better tools now and I value myself more. Love this story, Rona, and I didn't even notice your thumb! xo
I hope you plan to assemble all these achingly-beautiful weekly posts into a book. I would buy it. It would sit next to my copy of Starter Dog. ❤️