Two.

Happy Anniversary.

Two years ago today, during one of the wettest springs on record, I stood in the home of friends, nervously fidgeting with a cascading bouquet of flowers. The hubbub of thirty-six people had passed through the house and out to the tent in the garden. My mother had been ordered out to join them by Lee, who calmly informed her that he would follow us out with a golf umbrella, should the skies open up again before Maria and I reached the tent.

I had been asked to make a few decisions over the last half-hour - the intermittent rain argued for chairs to be moved into the tent, rather than holding the ceremony out in the open air, but nobody was going to make that decision for me. In a dramatic, last-minute gesture John had sent a necklace of pearls to me via Maria, causing the usually un-superstitious me to panic over the heirloom necklace I was already wearing (my "something old"). Fighting the unaccustomed paralysis in my generally swift and flexible decision-making muscles, the chairs went under the tent and I wore both necklaces, the art-nouveau pendant looking as if it was hanging from the string of pearls.

But now, there were no more decisions. Handel's unintentionally appropriate "Water Music" had started up and it was my cue to move. I looked at Maria. She gave a last, expert twitch of my veil and we went out together. There was the tent. There were our guests. And there was John, grinning like a madman. I had refused to let him see the dress - not out of superstition, but because I wanted to see that expression, that grin, that moment of seeing his jeans-and-ponytail girl as a bride-icon.

Two years ago today, we told each other we would be together for better or for worse. And we have found that our wedding, with its rain, its last-minute furniture shuffling, our steadfast insistence on the things that mattered to us, and our disregard of things that didn't, has been a pretty good metaphor for our marriage. The things we worried about turned out not to be problems. Other things we didn't expect have loomed large, but we have nonetheless moved forward. We have talked and comforted. We have celebrated and commiserated. We have each other.

Posted: Tuesday - June 21, 2005 at 07:51 AM | |