Sixteen years of Mexican matrimony

TODAY IS MY ANNIVERSARY, 16 years of wedded bliss.

I’ve been married three times, which has been interesting. The first lasted just five years but resulted in my only children. There were two. A girl who’s now almost 52, and a boy who died in the hospital after three days.

I then got a vasectomy. I was just 24.

My daughter is named Celeste, and my son was named Ian Lee.

The first was a self-imposed shotgun marriage. The second, which lasted 10 years though we lived together 19 years, was done for practical matters, health insurance mostly. The moral of this is don’t point a shotgun at yourself, and don’t marry for practical matters. Do it for the traditional reasons.

Do it for love and romance.

This last marriage, the ceremony, took place in the interior patio of my sister-in-law’s coffee shop on the main plaza. A judge presided. I had no idea how civil marriages were done in Mexico, so it was all a surprise to me.

You stand there with your witnesses, and the judge goes through the words. You don’t say, I do. You say, I accept, but in Spanish, of course.

Here we are waiting for the judge to show up. She was late. That’s me on the left, of course, my child bride, her sister who seethed with envy the entire evening (note face) and her husband, a man who later shot himself to death by mishap in a “cry for help” after his wife tossed him out in the street.

Mexico is full of endless drama.

We had a great time. About 30 people showed up, and we danced in the patio after the rather dry ceremony with the judge. This fellow provided the music.

This video was not shot during the wedding, but that’s the guy.

Having been married three times, twice to Gringas and once to a Mexicana, I cannot avoid making comparisons. Since the nations’ cultures are drastically different, so are the women. I recommend the latter over the former.

There is no comparison.

While I rather fell into the first two marriages, I was quite deliberate with this one. I even got down on my knee to propose, and I did it between two pyramids built centuries ago by the indigenous folks of our area.

These are the actual pyramids. Women like it when you make a splash.

Whether it was the pyramids, the singer known as El Potro, the magic of the judge or some other unknown factor, this marriage has been a keeper.

Best move of my life.