The Morning Patrol with Mastelek

Visions of an Angel

It happened as casually as a discussion about the weather. Kathleen (Kath) had just returned from a trip to America, suffering from jet-lag, but keen to meet me as she stepped off the plane. We later went for dinner at a pub (one of those faux Irish ones that dotted our landscape in the late nineties) and I, ever practical, said, “Why don’t you just move in with me at the townhouse in Norscot Slopes?”

She looked at me with that half-smile that always meant trouble for me. “Not unless we’re married,” she said.

I laughed, then realised she wasn’t joking. So I said the most natural thing in the world: “Well, then… shall we get married?” And just like that, with no grand gesture, no bended knee, no orchestra swelling in the background, and not even an engagement ring ready, we decided to spend the rest of our lives together. At that moment, and etched forever in my memory the entertainment system where we where having dinner played Sweet Caroline.

She insisted that the next day we go and ask her parents. So off we went to Lombardy East for supper where I went with her father to his office and Kath went with her mom to the kitchen. Her father looked at me when I asked him about his daughter’s hand and I never heard his answer. He stood up and shouted, “GLYYNNNIE!” In walked Kath’s mom, whom I suspected had been speaking to her daughter in the kitchen about it and asked me straight up what were my plans and when was the wedding. Under pressure, and on the spot, I replied that it would be before the end of the year.

Kath loved candles. Loved them with a passion that bordered on pyromania. When it came to our wedding, she turned the altar at Avianto into a fire hazard of biblical proportions. Round candles, square candles, triangular ones (well actually they were mini-pyramids), and one enormous pillar candle that looked like it had been stolen from a medieval cathedral. When they were all lit, the heat rolled off the altar in waves. The poor priest stood closest, sweating through his vestments, being gently braaied in the name of romance. I could see the beads of perspiration on his forehead and knew exactly how he felt. My suit felt like a sauna. All I could think was: Let’s get this done before we all spontaneously combust. I suspect the priest felt the same; he delivered the shortest homily in Methodist history and practically sprinted through the vows.

The reception was a blur of faces, some beloved, some vaguely familiar, some I met that day and never saw again. Weddings are strange that way; they gather your entire life into one room for a few hours, then scatter everyone back into the wind like what the coyote did to the stars.

We escaped for a brief honeymoon at Mount Grace, then a few indulgent days at the Beverly Hills in Umhlanga. But the real honeymoon, the one we still talked about years later, was Ireland, Bunratty Castle, the Ring of Kerry, rain that felt like a blessing, and Kath laughing in the wind with her hair flying wild at the Cliffs of Moher. To this day, my happy place is Durty Nelly’s at Bunratty.

Looking back, it was a magnificent day. And still, on quiet weekend mornings when I’m out on eddy, I take the route past Avianto in Muldersdrift. I slow down as I pass the entrance, glance backwards, and I swear I see her standing there in her wedding dress, holding that bouquet of white roses, smiling at me like she’s been waiting all this time.

I married an angel & she is still there.

This was the the song at the wedding reception. In contemplation, she was already preparing for what was about to happen in choosing it. Most pertinent was that she changed to it at the last moment, away from a Shania Twain ballad.