It’s settled: The U.K. is in “uncharted territory.” In the immediate wake of the British decision last month to leave the European Union, an aide to Prime Minister David Cameron got the mantra going, declaring, “We’re in uncharted territory.” The New York Times picked up the motif and proclaimed that the vote “Sends a Nation with a Storied History into Uncharted Territory.” The BBC asked whether the EU can save itself in the face of “Brexit’s uncharted territory.” The tumbling value of the pound, according to an alarmed Financial Times, caused “US Treasuries [to] fall into uncharted territory.”
My wife and I left for England with our three children the day after the Brexit vote. We arrived to find, happily, the island had not sunk (though you would think that was one of the many imminent risks faced by the U.K., what with all the panicked commentary). And happier still, the tumbling pound—thanks, panicked commentary!—meant our vacation dollars would buy that much more Cotswold cheese, ripe in-season strawberries, and mellow cask-drawn ales.
Goodness knows the political class was doing its best to prove that chaos was what would come of the Leave campaign beating Remain. After Cameron announced he would be stepping down as prime minister, there was no orderly lining-up of MPs behind the Cameron rival who had led Leave to victory. No, poor old floppy-headed Boris Johnson found himself Tonya-Hardinged by his longtime ally Michael Gove: On the day he was expected to announce he would be leading Johnson’s campaign among MPs, Gove instead denounced his old friend as unworthy and unfit and in the next breath announced his own campaign. In the mad scramble that followed, the MP to emerge with the best shot at Downing Street was not Gove (Iago has never exactly been the most popular character in Othello) but a squishy, left-leaning Remainian.
Labour, meanwhile, went into leadership convulsions of its own (not that anyone really seemed to care). And on the right, the triumphant leader of the U.K. Independence Party called it quits, his work having been done.
Over the course of a week, the wobbly exchange rate did bless us with ever-cheaper cheese, strawberries, and cask-drawn ales, but Britain seemed otherwise to be weathering its cross-Channel storm.
While in England, I gave some thought to the risks and rewards of sailing out into uncertain waters. And not just because of the Brexit circus. You see, we had arranged our London trip to celebrate the date—exactly 20 years before—when my yet-to-be wife Jennifer and I had run off to England to get married, and failed.
Back in early 1996, Jen and I had been engaged, only to become disengaged late in the spring. That summer we chanced upon one another at Dulles airport (Jen just happened to be arriving as I was departing). Over a drink, we made up, and I floated the nutty notion we should forgo the trappings and tensions of a wedding and simply elope. A couple of hours later we were on a plane for London, a destination chosen for no better reasons than that it seemed romantic and there were seats available on a flight to Heathrow.
Once in London we quickly discovered that getting married there without waiting weeks was, as the Brits are wont to say, “not on.” (The great bebop trombonist Carl Fontana once told me in an Eton pub, “This England is nice and all, but it ain’t no Vegas.”)
Soon we were back in the United States. But instead of admitting defeat, we went to the courthouse in Leesburg, Va., near Dulles, where our adventure had begun. There, getting married was a simple matter of showing up with $30 for the license and $30 for the officiating judge. And, oh yes, we had to take an oath that we weren’t prohibitively closely related.
Our friends thought Jen had lost her marbles. They no doubt thought me crazy too, but that assessment was tempered by their appreciation of my obvious good fortune. I wouldn’t have been surprised if some of them had gotten a pool together to bet on how short our marriage would last. And yet, here we are 20 years later not only still married, but happily so, and blessed with kids who make us smile at the impossible wonder of it all.
We’ve been lucky. But for all of us, the things in life that matter take some luck because they entail taking chances. The best things in our lives start with stepping out into the unknown. Life is full of risk and uncertainty. We’re all in uncharted territory, you might say—and not necessarily a bad thing at that.
