The Butterfly Hours Memoir Project: HONEYMOON

For 2019 I'm running a year-long series on my blog in which I share my responses to the writing assignment prompts found in THE BUTTERLY HOURS by Patty Dann.

I welcome you to join me, if you like! I've divided the prompts by month, and the plan is to respond to 3 (or so) a week. For some of these I may write poems, for others prose. The important thing is to mine my memory. Who knows where this exploration will lead?

In January I wrote about: apron, bar, basketball, bed, bicycle, birthday, boat, broom, button, cake, car.

In February: chair, chlorine, church, concert, cookbook, couch, dancing, desk, dessert, dining room table, diploma.

March: divorce, door, dream, emergency room, envelope, eyebrows, first apartment, first job, food, game, garden.

April: I took a break to focus on ARTSPEAK: Happy!

Here are the prompts for May: gloves, great-grandparent, guidebook, gun, gym class, hair, hands, hat, high heels, honeymoon, hood.

HONEYMOON

I've been trying to keep all of these memoir responses focused on my childhood, but how can I do that with this particular prompt?! Though some might say I WAS a child when I married Paul... it was 1991, and I was 20 years old. But I'm one of those "born older" people, so I didn't feel particularly young... I was ready to go!

Irene & Paul at Chef Tell's restaurant,
Grand Cayman

We journeyed to the Cayman Islands. The trip was a gift from Paul's parents, and it was such a sweet time... my first big scuba diving trip, and hello, our HONEYMOON, so of course I have a ton of memories! Here are just a few:

1. Stingray City – nothing quite like being swarmed by stingrays!
2. the turtle farm on Grand Cayman
3. buying black coral earrings from a roadside artisan on Cayman Brac
4. exploring Rebecca's Cave on Cayman Brac
5. how hungry I was at the end of each diving day – I especially recall the huge plate of spaghetti I basically inhaled
6. getting sunburned – on my knees! And Paul saying, “you should've worn Bullfrog.”
7. relaxing together in the hammock on the beautiful Caribbean shore

8. 

   we had fun with an underwater
   camera, even though the pics
   didn't turn out all that great

   eating conch fritter's at Chef Tell's restaurant
9. feeling some anxiety whenever we were on a dive and I couldn't instantly see Paul (my diving buddy) beside me
10. riding the waves over to Little Cayman and eating boxed lunches on the boat – I got salami, and said to Paul, “You got ham!” – which I preferred. He's a sweetheart and switched with me.

Just Married!

at the turtle farm

We're actually planning to celebrate our 30 year anniversary with a return diving trip to the Caymans... it's been so long since we've dived that we're going to take a whole new certification class. It's nearly two years away, but I'm already excited. :)