Category Archives: Marriage

Weather on my May 7 wedding: A task to delegate

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None of my damn business

It occurs to me

That I could delegate

The weather

On my wedding day.

It’s just too much,

With five days to go,

Amidst printing programs and

Last-minute shopping,

To think of

Changing the weather patterns,

Too.

Erecting colossal fans in the atmosphere

To blow rain clouds or

Cold fronts away.

Building an immense clear dome

Over the whole Twin Cities metro area

To repel rain and wind but

Let the sunshine in.

Launching a new sun into the sky that would

Hover under any cloud cover,

And would be tethered to the spire atop the

IDS Center so it could never roam

Too far from the Twin Cities.

I just don’t have time.

I must have help.

But who to ask?

Who is up to the task?

Oh good god.

I don’t want to ask

Him.

He’s so unpredictable.

He’ll use this as a

Teachable moment about

Acceptance.

Pleas for mercy after a pitiless winter,

Cries of unfairness at flurries in May,

Don’t help.

All I can do is buy a scarf

In my wedding colors

And get my rain coat dry-cleaned.

Fine,

God.

Whatever.

You can have the

Weather-task.

You’ll do it anyway.

All I have to say is:

Thank you for the saying about

Rain on your wedding day

Meaning you’ll be rich.

It is some consolation.

12 days to wedding: Distractible

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Less than two weeks to the wedding.

This blank sheet of paper is delicious.

I love to plunge into the page.

The thrill.

But,

I haven’t been doing it.

I’ve let these practices slide away:

The writing,

The nightly inventory.

I’m still doing yoga–

Too vain to let that go–

And I’ve been remembering to pray.

Even if it’s after I’ve stood up from bed,

Am cleaving my contacts onto my eyeballs,

And twinges of discontentment–

The weather,

The laundry,

The job–

Poke my gut.

Then I’m back to bed,

Kneel on the mattress,

Pull the duvet over my shoulders

And finally pray.

Even yoga is distracted.

I put my iPhone on my mat to

Read my Daily Reflection during

Sun salutations,

And I’m light and bouncy on the words.

They don’t take.

I’m making lists in my mind:

Linens.

Flowers.

Lighting.

Programs.

Today, though,

I’m up and writing.

Normal feels good.

One more normal week before

Wedding week starts.

I have a lot to do.

150th anniversary of Civil War; Also anniversary of first marriage

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Photo: civilwarhome.com

April 12.

In the throes of planning my

Second wedding.

I saw a headline about the

150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War,

Which reminded me:

Seven years ago,

Destination wedding in London.

Giggling,

Drunk,

In a London pub,

Over the fact that I was getting married on the

Date the first shots were fired on Fort Sumter.

Now,

With three weeks to go before I marry Joe,

It irritates me that I would be writing about my

First wedding.

The implication being that I’m somehow

Not over it.

(Although when you have kids together,

You never talk about “being over it.”

You just figure out how to

Get along day-by-day.)

In planning this wedding,

Joe and I both say it occasionally:

“At my first wedding…”

At first I cringed when I said it,

Or smiled apologetically at Joe,

Who was smiling apologetically at me.

Then it just became a joke.

The apologetic smile turned into a smirk.

We’re weathered.

We’ve lived.

We’re vintage.

Bought once new and discarded,

Only to turn up as a

Find

On the rack

By someone who

Gets

The little details:

The fine stitching,

The unusual buttons.

When you have kids together,

These exes will

Always

Be

Around.

Sometimes you wish they would

Go away.

(Or in a moment of face-twisting anger and fear,

Worse.)

But they

Never will.

Interactions with my ex are

Calm and even

Friendly

Now.

Still,

I can hope that April 12 someday signifies the

Start of the Civil War only,

Which it was long before

Me and my

Dramatics

Came along.

Marriage the Second: In which our heroine wonders what business she has trying this again

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Oh, and our marriage license came in the mail yesterday, too.

It was like a scene out of a sitcom:

Joe and I in a pre-marriage counseling session,

Reading through the vows we had written,

And then somehow getting into a huge fight

About who does the laundry

And how

And when

And who puts the clothes away

And how

And when.

I could feel the corners of my eyes drawing back,

Snake-like,

And I might have been hissing

As I accused

And reared back

And struck again.

The minister,

A young guy who looks like Joe would with a beard,

Watched and listened—

I forgot he was there.

I imagine

His alarmed eyes flicking back and forth between us

Before he finally interrupted:

“Okay, okay,

This is good.

This is obviously something you need to talk about.”

Walking out to the car

Two strides ahead of Joe,

I made a decision to

Glower

And silently contemplate what business we,

Who have both failed once at marriage

And can’t even cooperate on laundry,

Have trying to do this again.

But as soon as we closed (me: slammed) the car doors,

Joe suddenly and uncharacteristically started

Talking (purging)

About his history,

And the harsh refrains that play in his head.

I softened in the driver’s seat,

Listening and asking questions.

This was new information to me.

(Will there always be new information?)

We stopped at an Ethiopian place by our house

And ordered a veggie sampler

And held hands across the torn plastic tablecloth.

“Babe, I want to be the

Best husband

You’ve ever had,” Joe said,

And I started to laugh and cry at the same time.

We went home and went upstairs to our bedroom.

And Joe turned off all the lights

But one,

And I fell asleep to him

Putting the laundry away.

On Valentine’s Day, a wedding ring arrives

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It came yesterday,

Valentine’s Day,

In the mail:

Joe’s wedding ring.

Made of meteorite:

Chunks of streaked, slate-colored iron

Dropped to earth from space,

And shiny, copper-colored

Rose gold,

From inside the earth.

A particular design

For a particular man.

I had to order it over the Internet —

Dizzying to send that much money over

Paypal for a piece of

Eternal jewelry.

It came via insured mail from

Flagstaff, Ariz.

(“Hippie town,” Joe says.

“Of course they make meteorite rings there.”)

And arrived on our doorstep on

Valentine’s Day afternoon.

I opened the package in the kitchen after

Shooing Joe upstairs.

My brother, a groomsman, was there,

And I made him squeeze the ring —

It didn’t give.

Money well-spent.

The small boy, of course,

Needed to see, too.

I gave it to him warily,

And hovered as he tried it on his small thumb

Lest he somehow drop it down the venting system.

He gave it back, apparently approving —

Good, ’cause he’ll be bearing it down the aisle on

May 7 —

And pulled his babysitting uncle to play.

Later, at the restaurant,

Gazing at each other over tea lights,

We ordered our first course off the prix fixe menu,

And Joe said,

“Get out that ring.”

I pulled the box out of my purse and opened it, and we both looked inside.

The ring is heavy and medieval-looking;

The meteorite inlay streaked as if with slate paint brush strokes.

The rose-gold lining shining from inside the ring like an underground lava flow.

Joe put it on his ring finger,

And I thought that it looked,

Against his skin,

Truly like iron.

It wasn’t until Joe went to the bathroom

And I studied the eternal randomness of the

Streaks and swipes,

And ran my finger along the smooth copper-glow lining,

And thought about how I’d

Earned the money

To buy this ring,

And was grateful to be able to do that

For Joe,

That the ring’s billion-year-old

Beauty

Was clarified.

When Joe came back from the bathroom,

I made him put it on his finger one last time.

“Happy Valentine’s Day, babe,” I said.