I Do

Daniel and Elizabeth Berry Rose (that is really her name – delightful, no?) were married by her father on a wide green lawn in the shadow of the Tetons.  The eight bridesmaids were asked to wear their own black dresses and shoes, and they carried clutches of wildflowers – the eight men wore black suits and red ties.  Two little barefooted flower girls in matching red eyelet sundresses tossed petals onto the green grass of the aisle.  The bride walked down on the arm of her father, an Episcopal priest wearing his most colorful vestments.  He looked like a jolly friar from the Canterbury Tales, with a shaggy beard and haircut, and is a delightful man who delights in the world and everything in it.  The bride was a vision in her gown – a halter style, with a plunging neckline and modest train.  Her elbow length veil blew back from her face in the wind, giving a teasing glimpse of the tiny red flower tucked into her coiled hair.  She wore an egg-sized turquoise ring on her left hand, seed pearls around her neck.  She and her groom stood between buckets of pink and red wildflowers and said I Do under the silent mountains.  Her father’s homily was brief – a collection of anecdotes telling how loved this bride and this groom are – a reminder that Jesus loved celebration – he choked on tears and smiled too widely as he lamented the absence of the bride’s mother, Lola, who had passed away months before.  The groomsmen discreetly passed handkerchiefs to the tearful bridesmaids, while the bride swallowed hard and held it together.  My mascara thus ruined, I wept freely during the happier part, as Dan and Liz recited those timeless vows and I watched the side of my husband’s face and whispered them myself, again.  “To have and to hold, in sickness and in health . . .” – and a fresh wave of tears for Lola at “til death do us part.”

Silver buckets of wildflowers and mint were the reception centerpieces.  The food was abundant and tasty, and the wine flowed freely from the open bar.  We danced, we talked, we did the wedding reception thing, and then towards the end of the night they announced the mother-son dance.  I watched Dan dance with his mother – a welcoming, funny, take-no-prisoners woman in a fantastic gold-detailed dress.  Dan is my contemporary, but tonight I was completely identifying with his mother.  I watched them dance, and knew one day if I was lucky I would do the same thing with my boy (and again, thoughts of Lola, who missed this day.)  If I was very lucky, my son would be marrying the kind of girl that Liz is.  While my imagination fast forwarded through 30 years, the MC announced that all mothers and sons should get up and finish the dance with Dan and his mom.  So I cradled my tiny sleeping son in my arms and cried into his fuzzy head as we swayed to Elton John.  Being a mother is so wonderful, and so hard hard hard.  My heart is breaking already at the thought of my baby boy leaving the nest, and I rested his head on my collarbone and dripped tears on his face and held his whole self in my two arms, trying my hardest to live fully the moments that he still easily fits there.

All this weeping was wearying, and I asked Patrick to take us home shortly after.  He dropped us off, and then left again to spend one last night with his group of old old friends.  I kissed him good-bye, and built a fire, and read aloud to my baby until we both were asleep.