THE WEDDING
“So do you love him?” he said to her.
“I don’t know. I don’t know what to believe anymore. I can’t keep waiting for you to make up your mind about what you want; something has to change the direction of my life. At least I know where I stand with him,” she replied with tears streaming down her face.
With this exchange, they stood facing one another in the corner of the quiet café and he gently kissed her forehead – his lips cold from the iced coffee he just finished.
Her hand in his, they walked to her car parked beneath the broken streetlight and he said goodbye.
“I hope he is able to make you happy.”
“Me, too. But I’m still not sure.”
He walked away into the darkness of the humid southern night and she wondered then if she would ever be happy again.
These words run through my head after all this time and I can still remember the smell of his cologne on his worn out Rush tee shirt. The look of his face continues to be etched in to my mind like the carving in the tree where we first kissed. The warm breeze serves as a reminder of the first time I felt his lips on mine and his anxious breaths on my cheek. It’s a constant reminder of a past I will never be able to ignore. It has been three years since I’ve seen him – yet it feels as though it was just yesterday when we concluded we had met the end of our journey together. Often times I still see him in my dreams and when I wake up find myself clinging to sleep. I can feel him lying next to me and the warmth of the bed sheets is a reminder of the very thing I once held. Disappointment looms over me and the life I once had with him has been abandoned. The voice of reason is a bitch. Some people are meant to travel independently, never realizing that Neverland is a thing of fairy tales.
It was late September, just when the southern air was beginning to crisp over and I could smell fall coming. The leaves of the large oak tree in my father’s front yard were turning orange, yellow and red. Like a painting…it’s always like a painting. If you have ever been to Northern Alabama in the fall, it’s a feeling in the air and a sentiment you can’t ignore. Nostalgia begins to set in and I’m taken back to that tree where we first promised one another a life of happiness under the stars as they illuminated the front yard. Nostalgia is a dangerous thing. It can become the basis of every expectation in adulthood and infiltrate your future happiness like a parasite. Because once you have tasted the essence of this type of love, you are never, ever the same.
The sun was beginning to set and the guests were beginning to arrive. The hayfield in the back ground stood out to me as I gazed out of the window of my room at the bed and breakfast – The Willows – the innkeepers called it. It reminded me of the time I was lying beneath the sweltering sun last August in the secret destination we shared on Green Mountain - naked, melting in to one another. I recall hearing the electricity running through the power lines and the katydids in the trees around us. My hair was full of the dried grass left behind from the last mow. What I wouldn't have given to be lying on that flannel quilt in the summer heat again.
I was interrupted by a knock on the door; my mother appeared before me grinning like the Cheshire Cat.
“You look beautiful. I’m so happy for you today,” she said.
“Thanks. I’m not sure I feel as thrilled as you look.”
“He’s a good man – he’ll take care of you. He’s everything your father and I could have hoped for in your life. It can’t always be what we dream of: we can only make the best of what crosses our path,” she said.
I rolled my eyes, convinced she had been drinking because she was clearly not seeing what was in front of me and ahead of me. I was about to embark on the worst decision of my life and she was pushing me toward it like moth to a flame. My mother and I have never agreed on much – in fact, we rarely agreed on anything. The one thing we always agreed on, however, is how love should be reciprocated. I think in that moment she was hoping I had let go of the love I once knew so that I could embrace a life that would have served its purpose. What she hadn’t accounted for is how I would grow to compare every experience to the one I held on to beneath that damn oak tree. Someone should have really burned that tree down years ago.
“For a bride, I had hoped you would be more ready – you don’t seem all that ready for this,” my mother said.
“Do you think this is a bad idea? I mean, shouldn’t getting married feel like a beginning and not an outer body experience?”
My mom just laughed, telling me it was nerves and not to worry too much with it feeling like I was an outsider looking in on my life.
One should never feel like an outsider in their own life; this is not how the intention was built. The older and more complacent with myself I become, I have realized we spend too much time being guided by what others think is best for us; not what is actually best for us. Experience prepares us for adult life and youth is just a botched architectural design, not meant to work and always meant to be torn down and reconstructed. The mistake we make sometimes, however, is not rebuilding from what we’ve learned but by how we’ve been designed.
“Mom, you still didn’t answer my question...am I making a mistake?”
The conversation abruptly ended with a knock on the door. You could feel the irritation wash over my mother because she believe in preserving tradition. And no one should ever see the bride before the wedding ceremony.
(SEPTEMBER, 2003)