May 18, 2011
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Frank dropped me off at sister’s house the night before the wedding and when asked what I was doing for flowers, I said that I was going to make my own bouquets. Having chosen Diane as my bridesmaid, we would just sort of coordinate our dresses. Frank planned the music with my favorite canon from Appalachian Spring and a couple of pieces which he had arranged for a woodwind quintet and he honored my request that they play the traditional wedding march. By the time I had planned the entire thing and after I bought the flowers for the bouquets at some K store kind of place, we had spent less than four hundred dollars and fifty cents and I could hardly look Frank straight in the face to say that we had spent that much which he thought was somewhat hilarious of me. Our friend Merlin was to photograph the entire thing for us for free, him being a photographer as a hobby. Poor guy and his wife had their cars trashed twice, because Merlin did amateur radio, and they, having chosen to live in a trailer park, got labeled as Communist because of the antennaes on their house and because Merlin had a Russian name, but I was so appreciative that he was voluntarily taking his time to do our wedding pictures.
Mama had sent me a little box that had, as she put it; “Just a little something to wear on my wedding night.” Without opening her package I knew that it was, “Baby Doll Pajamas,” and I told Frank so, and I was surprised that he had never heard of such a thing, so I was feeling extremely amused that I was going to have, “Baby Dolls” to spice up my wedding night.
I got to the church and Frank had something to tell me, a last minute message about walking down the aisle, because the pastor was feeling more Episcopalian that day and I could hear all of the prelude music as Diane hugged me trying to calm me down, as only Diane could do and then it came. The wedding march. I undoubtedly almost ran down the aisle.
Probably the thing that happened which helped the most was that Diane and Jim had us there for Thanksgiving once more and having married on a Saturday with that next Thursday as Thanksgiving, I could see my husband in the same light in which I had met him and I would take him in my arms when we got home and the bad memory would just fade and it would be paradise from then on; A foolish thought if I ever had one, but it seemed to be the balm that covered the wound, that sealed it up enough that I could be his lover once more and not just an estranged new wife who was terrified that I had walked in to a chamber of horrors. We would be well again and the two of us once more, because contrary to love meaning that you are never going to have to say you are sorry, a theme from a movie we would see later, it means you apologize as if it is a prayer; It cannot take a day or two or five; It must be done when needed. Then it occurred to me that in my parents life, neither of them could say to each other the simple; “I am sorry that I hurt you so.” They would end their days calculating the normalcy of husbands and wives and how it is so normal to what they called; “Fuss and Fight Sometimes.” I wish that my Mother could have heard those words once, could have said them once, but the power of conversation was not in their tool kit for taking care of themselves or their children and it would be years before I would learn to use conversation instead of packing sorrows in like dead wood melting into a forest floor. Oh my happy day had come and gone, but a new me was already beginning to emerge and I was going to need some help along the way, so my dear ones, remember these words, “I need help” and find a place where someone hears your voice clearly.
