A Much-Needed Good Memory
A hundred invitations was about eighty invitations too many. What was I thinking? My intent was to be a good wife, to concede to my husband’s preference without resistance or spite, even if it did mean that the wedding dress wasn’t the only thing that was going to make it hard for me to breathe on that day. Add to the asphyxiation the fact that my wedding day was to be the first time in over a decade that my Mom, my three brothers, and I were to be in the same place—hell, the same state, let alone the same building—at the same time. Then couple with that the fact that this day was also to be the first meeting, not only between my husband and my family, but also between his family and mine.
My older brother, Matt, had offered to walk me down the aisle—a promise made to the crying, eleven-year-old version of me who had just realized for the first time in the year since Daddy’s death that I had been robbed of the tradition of being given away into my future marriage by a loving father. Hindsight being what it is to this life, I’d like to think that I would’ve dryly laughed if I would’ve known then how it seemed it was going to be now, as opposed to the fairytale my eleven-year-old self was imagining.
Matt intended to wear a black, crushed-velvet suit with a silver vest, and mint green over silver, striped bow tie. Matt intended to pop out of a black T-top firebird in that crushed velvet suit. And Matt intended to sport an interracial, bisexual, love triangle between his two arms outside of the moment he would set them aside and lend me an arm to walk down the aisle.
Not one single part of that description was even remotely what my eleven-year-old self could have ever fathomed, but true to the conditioning that comes with being raised among eccentrics is the accepting nature I had developed early on as a kid. As for me and my opinions, personally, nothing about that description bothered me. I find humor in my brother’s eccentricities. I laugh with love at him and his oddities.
What did bother me, however, was the said first impressions due to be formed on this day. And did I mention the 100 invitations? The vast majority of those invitations represented a person, or a couple, or a family that had come to know me from the merits belonging to me and my children, alone. I had moved off out from underneath that umbrella of familial association for a reason. Namely because I am mild in comparison and seemingly a different breed than they are altogether. Not to mention the tension with Mom.
When I escaped the family’s shadow, I landed in Small Town, USA: McRae, Arkansas. My in-moments-to-be husband has lived on this same street essentially his entire life. In McRae, everyone knows your name. And even if they didn’t know me, they did know him or his Mom and them.
“Oh my god. My brother is going to send this little po-dung town into a culture shock!” I felt like I needed to put a disclaimer on the invites, you know, just to be fair. But I didn’t. I just sat in waiting and added “shock” to the list of things negatively impacting my intake of air.
Back to those relationship problems with Mom… did I mention that the last time I tried to see Mom was over a year and a half ago? But I was dejected when the nursing staff (per instruction) sent us away upon arrival. She had collapsed with chest pains on her overnight cashier shift. I found out the next day. We had driven an hour out of concern for her well-being. Then not a word since.
So, there was that, but many things worked out in my favor on my wedding day. Matt’s love triangle stayed home and he borrowed a friend’s Honda because he had to put the firebird in the shop. Not even half of the people we invited showed up. This was much to my relief, and I partially credit it to my “potluck reception” idea. I imagine some people opted out of the wedding invite to avoid having to prepare a dish. For the record, though, I also requested “no gifts” for this reason. Personally, that seems like a fair exchange, in a guest’s favor. No $20 gift card, just a tray of pinwheels or finger sandwiches. But that’s beside the point. The point being that my brother didn’t shock the countryside (partially because the countryside didn’t come), I remembered all my vows, and my daughters were orderly playing the parts of maid-of-honor, bride’s maid, and flower girl. My mom showed up. We didn’t catch the sanctuary on fire during the Unity Candle Ceremony. The reception was short and sweet. The clean up was fast, and then the chaos dissipated and something truly amazing happened: We had a pleasant family gathering. My Mom, all my brothers, family friends, my new husband, my daughters and I returned to our house. I pulled out the thirty photo albums that I had rescued from being auctioned off several years ago after Mom had stopped paying her storage unit fees. Rather than any animosity regarding that, we all sat in the floor and on the furniture throughout the living room, reliving old memories, retelling those same age-old stories that I hold dear to my heart and use to represent the good parts of my childhood.
Julie, who I call my adoptive Mom because she has played that part for me over the past eight years, stayed at my home with the kids while the boys, mom, and I went out to the land. It was still daylight and Mom couldn’t stay for the bonfire, so after tour-guiding Mom around the property, Drew, my youngest brother, left to drive her home. Though, not before driving his Blazer off a four-foot drop and scraping its underside on the concrete culvert on the way down. Classic Drew.
A few friends came. There was beer drank and horse shoes thrown, a fire built, and echoes of laughter meeting the onslaught of darkness. Matt, Mardy, Bobby, and I were camping out overnight. While Bobby drove a friend back to our house where his ride home would pick him up, I sat at the wooden picnic table with the heat and crackle of the fire at my back and the dim lantern light over my head. I gazed up at the stars and thanked the heavens for the sublime moment of peace in my heart. I clicked off the lantern light so that I could feel more fully-encompassed by the sheet of stars billowing down towards me from the night sky.
From the darkness in front of me, a flash of light caught my eye off in the distance. It was Mardy and Matt down by the pond’s edge. Each with a flashlight in hand, together my older twin brothers helped each other pitch their tents beside each other for the first time in nearly twenty years. The last time we had all camped together was about a year after Daddy died. As I watched my brothers, I fully opened my heart to the surreal moment. I drank in every beautiful detail: crickets chirping from the blades of tall grass, the light and shadows created by the fire dancing across the pitch-black night, the warm breeze whispering. My heart was full.
Though the night was nearly over, the memory still had more yet in store. Once Bobby returned and the tents were pitched, Mardy went to sleep and Matt cajoled Bobby and me into a midnight swim. Bobby and I on the boat and Matt on the canoe, we all toasted the marriage under the moonlight, which was seemingly brighter atop the water than it was just moments ago on dry land. We laughed with each other and, in my lace dress, I jumped in. We all jumped in, and climbed back out, and then back into the water again at varying intervals. Eventually, we resigned ourselves to reluctantly turn the page on that day.
Waking to a bright morning equally as beautiful as the midnight had been just hours before, Matt took the boat out again that morning. The rest of us languidly loafed around, dressing, and grooming, and packing, and relaxing, dragging our feet every step of the way, prolonging the integrity of the memory’s bubble for as long as we could. But we had to burst our bubble eventually. By midday, husband and I were due to let our honeymoon journey begin. We concluded my familial memory at Waffle House—Mardy, Matt, Bobby, and Me. You know, us older three siblings had never dined out together as adults before? It’s crazy, we’re all in our thirties.
When I look back on that day now, I’m grateful for the much-needed good memory that my family and I made and can now share together. I’m hopeful that it’ll be one of many steps taken forward in the process of repairing a bond broken by many years, tears, fears, and sneers directed toward and deriving from each of us according to our own individual perspectives. As for my perspective, does this mean that I forgive my Mom? Maybe. Or maybe not. Maybe forgiveness doesn’t matter. Forgiveness comes and goes it would seem. What seems to always remain present is the love. It’s just that sometimes that love is pain. Other times, that love is more. That’s the best way I can think to describe it; sometimes love is just so much more.
McP 2016
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