The Honeymoon

Ahhhh, the honeymoon...a time to get to know each other better. To spend lots of time together, alone.

After the wedding, reception, and open house in Burley the next day, Tom and I were really looking forward to the honeymoon. His family had friends who owned a cabin near Sun Valley. We arrived Sunday evening and worked hard at getting to know each other;)

It was on our honeymoon that I learned Tom has nightmares. One night, his screams woke me from a deep sleep. We were in a cabin in the woods in the middle of the night and the man next to me starts screaming! I woke him, and he soon saw that I was more terrified than he was. He calmed me back to sleep by singing to me.(Now, if he starts screaming, I whack him 'til he stops.)

We did venture out of the cabin. We went to a movie one day, Who Framed Roger Rabbit. After the movie, we went across the street to a store. We noticed an ad for an Arabian horse ranch nearby. I love horses, especially Arabians. When I was younger, I would trade babysitting for horse lessons at an Arabian school near my home. They were show horses and were leg trained. What that means is the horse responds to the pressure on his back from your legs. If you squeeze your legs the horse will go, if you relax, the horse will stop. When Tom saw that ad, he suggested we check it out.

The ranch was beautiful. There were many gorgeous horses in the pastures surrounding the owners house. When he saw us, he talked to us and offered to let us ride one of his horses around the corral. I was rusty, but the lessons I had when I was younger came back to me and in no time I felt very comfortable on the pretty white mare. She didn't have a saddle or bridle. I was riding her bareback with a lead rope hooked to her halter. Tom got on and after a brief lesson did really well. The owner grabbed another mare and let us take the two horses out of the corral for a short walk down the lane and back. On one side of the lane was a pasture with several mares. On the other side was a pasture with two or three stallions. The walk down the lane was uneventful. As we turned to head back, the stallions became agitated. The were shaking their heads and snorting. The mares on the other side responded by dancing and whiniing. The stallions took off on a dead run. The mares did the same. Our horses in the middle were following instinct, and bolted. I was trying to relax my legs and hang on without a saddle. Tom's horse was just ahead of me and I saw him fly off his horse just before I couldn't hang on mine anymore.

After I came to a stop, I knew something was wrong, I just didn't know what. Tom was there almost as soon as I fell. When I looked at him I noticed the bright red mark just above his eye. Apparently, the horses back hoof clipped him as he went off the horse. He reached down to help me up. I tried to move my arm to take his hand when the pain hit. After sitting for awhile trying to gain some composure, I was able to get up. The owner felt terrible. We sat on his porch, but it soon became obvious that I would have to go to the hospital.

Tom drove me to the tiny hospital in Sun Valley. I was examined and the doctor believed I had broken my collarbone. The x-ray was very painful. In order to see the break I held on to full gallon jugs in hopes the break would separate enough to be seen. The x-rays did show a break. He also believed I had broken my tailbone, but I didn't get an x-ray there. I was given a brace, some pain meds and discharged.

We went back to the cabin where I willingly took the pain medicine and went to sleep. I don't remember how long I slept. I woke and before I was even very conscious I felt overwhelming nausea and threw-up close to the bed. The drugs made me feel very out of it. I felt like I was having an out of body experience. I was pretty helpless. My dear, sweet, brand new husband cleaned and scrubbed the cabin.

It was decided (by him, I was in no condition to make any kind of decisions), that we should go back to Burley. On the way home, I slept most of the time. I woke up once to throw-up in Tom's prized Toyota Celica. Poor guy! We got to his Mom's house where she graciously swooped in to minister to me. The pattern for the next couple of days was sleep, throw-up, sleep.....One thing I do remember was being so helpless my new mother-in-law had to help give me a bath. Very humbling.

Tom decided we needed to head back to Logan as school would be starting soon. On the way home, I was in the same pattern, but Tom was able to pull over in time for me to throw-up. It finally hit me, I stopped taking the pain medicine. I felt so much better after that!

Even though my head was clear, I wasn't able to do much. For the first few weeks of our marriage, Tom did my hair.(As you could tell in the two previous posts, big hair was very important to me) I know there were times in those first few weeks where he wondered what he had gotten himself into. He was thrown into getting to know me more than he might have wanted too, but he was always sweet and wonderful to me.

Can your honeymoon top that? I'd love to hear.