It's ABC Wednesday again, and E is for eternity.
When I got married, I decided it would be for eternity. The Greek Orthodox wedding service made it sound like a grave decision that could not be overturned. The priest at St Nicholas church in the village of Galatas blessed our crowns, linked with a ribbon, joining the bride and groom, binding them for life. The crowns are kept throughout the married life of the couple, and there are even special frames available to keep them in. I wanted to put them in the same frame my parents had kept theirs in, but who knows what my father's wife did with it; at the time, I thought it impolite to ask. In any case, she ended up tearing her wedding crowns from the wall (for the second time) when she left him, which really was a waste of time and crown money in the first place.
I never got round to buying a frame for the crowns; for the last nine years, they've been hanging next to my wedding photo. I also kept a few flowers that had been used in my posh hairdo on the day of my wedding, and because I like to be fair to my husband and give him space, I salvaged a little bit of what was left of his wedding suit tie and stuck it onto the picture frame. The rest of the tie was cut up and fried, to be eaten as a dessert after the wedding banquet by his friends, according to a modern ritual. Men really are queer, aren't they?
