The Honeymoon

Three different people had felt the need to tell me that their honeymoons had had hiccups and that I shouldn’t put too much pressure on the trip, so I really shouldn’t have been surprised when things went wrong.

The wind caught my best friend’s beach umbrella in the Caribbean and blew it into her new husband’s face. He and his new black eye chased it into the ocean, where a jellyfish stung him; but the rogue beach umbrella did eventually make it home with them.

My other friend and her husband crashed their rental car on their way to return it. Their insurance covered everything; and no one was seriously hurt, but they nearly missed their flight home.

My aunt and uncle had their first fight when they were stocking the kitchen in their cottage. They still joke about it 35 years later.

Some of my husband’s buddies shared similar tales of woe with him, so he was prepared for some surprises along the way.

His brother overlooked a suitcase while loading the car and paid an exorbitant price to ship it to the hotel.

His best friend since kindergarten ran out of gas on the side of the highway, causing another friend to spend a personal day off work ferrying jerry cans to him.

His co-worker and his new wife misread their plane tickets, packed in a panic, and showed up to the airport eight hours early. They fell asleep waiting for their flight, didn’t hear the announcement of their gate change, and almost missed their plane anyway. Rumour says that they named their first child after the airline employee who woke them up and rushed them to the new gate.

With this information, we expected to come home with one or two comical incidents, but we certainly were not worried. Everything had worked out for all our friends and family members, after all. Confident in our ability to solve any problems and sure that whatever happened would be adorable, we set off for adventure with our matching luggage and smug smiles.

We really should have seen it coming.

My sister is an ecologist. Robby’s brother works in a garden center. Our grandmothers have grown gardens the size of public swimming pools and can talk about microbiomes all day. We went to college. We’re educated people. We KNOW THINGS.

We landed on the island and pranced through customs. “Anything to declare?” No, sir. Of course, we’re not smuggling weapons or drugs or small animals that will eat your native insects.

The rental agency had our car ready to go.

We made it through the local grocery store without fighting over croissants.

The cottage was gorgeous.

Everything was working perfectly.

HOW did we not see it coming?

We slept well on a king-sized bed with wonderful satin sheets and a dozen colourful pillows.

The weather the next day was perfect.

The beach was stunning.

The restaurant was sublime.

We returned to our lovely cottage.

You know when you enter a room and just know that something is wrong? Your parents are arguing, or your siblings are bickering, or a co-worker has misspoken terribly?

That was the feeling when we opened the door.

Something was off.

Everything looked normal, but Robby and I both sensed something strange. We looked through the whole house for signs of intruders or theft, but we found nothing suspicious.

The feeling of strangeness only grew, however.

We heard it first.

Robby and I love reptiles. We met in a pet store buying crickets for our respective snakes. The store had only two containers left but was getting a shipment in the next day. Robby gallantly offered to let me buy one of the containers instead of taking both even though he was there first. We showed up at the same time the next day, started talking, and that was that.

Crickets.

That was how we met.

That was how we bonded.

That was how we had to pay an exterminator to clear out our honeymoon cottage.

You can order crickets online. They come sealed in a convenient box. You can buy as many as you want to leave behind for the pet sitter. You can also mistake one of these boxes for a newly ordered tacklebox. In this case, you might think your husband had forgotten to pack his new tacklebox. You might pack the box, expecting to be the hero when he thinks his tacklebox is at home, but turning out to be the villain who flooded your cottage with crickets.

The owners were shockingly forgiving as we grovelled and promised to pay for any exterminator that they chose. They graciously gave us a discount when they moved us to one of their other properties, where we stayed until the original cottage was safe for human habitation again.

Our scheduled activities went well in the meantime.

Surfing lessons were a blast. I performed better than Robby, just as his friends had predicted.

Ziplining was thrilling. Robby spent 10 minutes talking me into actually stepping off the platform, just as my friends had predicted.

The zoo was unreal. We spent two whole days ensuring that we saw every gecko, salamander, and snake, just as our families had predicted.

We did get to finish our vacation at our first cottage, but we thoroughly searched each closet and still spent the first night back hearing phantom crickets.

When we returned the rental car, the line was much longer than when we picked it up, but there were no problems.

The shuttle was crowded, but the other passengers were friendly.

The flight was delayed by half an hour, but it went smoothly after we boarded.

When we staggered out of the airport to our friends who were picking us up, our luggage still matched, but our cockiness was gone.

“How was it?” Aurora gushed.

“Did you find all the boxes of crickets for Roxy and Smith?” I asked.

“I found eleven, but I couldn’t find the twelfth…oh. Oh, no.”

“Oh, yes.”