One year ago, I won primary custody of my children after a
very long and painful year of fighting. One
year ago I had my final dress fitting, and went on a frantic eleventh hour
shopping trip for an undergarment, rushing back to the restaurant where the
love of my life was putting the finishing touches and fresh cut flowers from
our yard on the chuppah he built for us.
I was in such a rush, I never noticed that I’d put my shirt on inside
out, and entered the restaurant with the tag hanging out. This was to be the first of a handful of
humanizing “doh!” moments from this event.
One year ago, I woke up at 6am next to my first love, got
dressed, and drove away with my daughter to get my hair done. One year ago my daughter and I walked into Wawa
with my hair done up like a southern beauty pageant contestant, feeling conspicuous
among the stares of the locals.
We drove in silence most of the way, and I let my mind flash
back to the boy who’d captured my attention when I was 15, the silent glances
we exchanged, never knowing that it ever meant anything. I could still see his face in my mind, soft
and dark, and his quiet stature so self-assured but unassuming. I remembered the butterflies I’d felt in his
presence, even long after our first dates.
Those same butterflies would revisit me 25 years later when we
reunited.
I saw us speeding along the backroads of our neighborhoods
in his VW beetle, walking hand-in-hand through Valley Forge park, sitting
side-by-side on the huge rocks in the woods near my Nana’s house. I saw us walking into the old Lakeside
restaurant on prom night, and feeling the roomful of eyes taking in this girl in
her Gunne Sax Victorian dress and this boy in his white tuxedo with tails. I saw his smile and the depth of his teenage
eyes when they rested on mine. I felt
his hands holding mine, his arms around me still, and those unspoken moments we
shared when we were totally and completely alone.
And, for a brief moment, I allowed myself to look inside the
window on the sickness that plagued my
heart and the heavy tears that fell for the loss of what should never have come
to an end. And then I remembered a day
in late fall 25 years later, when I unearthed my journal from those days and
read the words of my 17-year-old self, not nearly as sophisticated as I might
have written them today, but the love I defined on those pages was unmistakably
deep. The feelings I had then came
rushing back to me with such force that I sat weeping with an anguish not so
different than what I’d felt that last day I’d seen him. All those emotions tumbled through me and it
was like I was feeling them again for the first time.
I remembered the first time we were reunited, how the
butterflies came and made me nervous and trembling. How when he put his hand in mine, it was like
lightning – like the sky lit up like a thousand volts of light – because no
other hand ever felt so right. How when he
kissed me for the first time again, I remembered. How the smell of his skin was exactly the
same, yet I would never have known I remembered until I was that close to him
again.
One year ago, my heart was full, complete, and HOME. The preparations were well underway at the restaurant
when I arrived; my mom in the kitchen, and later assembling my bouquet herself and wrapped in ribbon.
My dear friend Treena, whom I’d met years earlier in this very place
working together, and who had stood by my side at my first wedding, doing food
preparations before going home to get dressed.
The staff running around readying tables and chairs for the ceremony. And then my man, with my son, bursting in
with the wedding cake. And my in-laws
arriving, with cousins from California – Todd’s dear cousin Suzanne stepping up
to my side for support right up until the last moment before I would take my
walk down the aisle to seal a promise made long ago.
It was a magical day in that courtyard. The sun was bright and the air was breezy,
and (nearly) everyone I loved and cherished was standing there waiting for me
to pass through the gate. They didn’t
know that I lost my earrings and had to borrow Suzanne’s, they didn’t know I
waited to get dressed until the last minute so that the bra I’d been wearing
was still imprinted on my back during the ceremony, they didn’t know my mom was
still getting dressed and her hair in curlers so that she missed the beginning
of our words to each other, and they didn’t know that Todd had erroneously put
on someone else’s pants when he got dressed.
They didn’t know that Todd and I had decided to begin the ceremony
at 11:11 am, because that was the date he proposed, and that that was why the
music was started and replayed several times because I was LATE. They didn’t see me running through the dusty
pavilion in my 4 and half inch heels as A
Thousand Years played again. And when I stepped up to the gate with my daughter
beside me, they didn’t see me trembling and ready to cry. I knew they were all there, those we loved,
but I couldn’t see. I couldn’t even see
Todd. I don’t actually know what I saw
in those moments I walked down that aisle.
No one noticed that my lips were trembling with the weight of this
moment.
And my husband would speak the most beautiful and eloquent words
of promise to me, and bring tears to everyone’s eyes. And I would see the tears forming in his
eyes, and fight back my own. And I would
fumble through the words I had written,
not nearly half as good as his, because for the first time in my life I couldn’t
write my feelings into one concise
and coherent statement, and probably every eye in the courtyard was as dry as
the Tempe sun with a perplexed, “huh? For
REAL?!”
And the ceremony was over, and everyone was happy and the
drinking commenced and I still had bra strap marks on my back, and when my 4
and a half inch heels got too painful I yanked them off and – in the most white
trash moment of my life – wiggled my way out of my pantyhose right there in the middle of the
courtyard, in front of many of my loved ones, and hopefully none of Todd’s
family. And had a couple of margaritas,
and cried with my Aunts over my Nana and uncle who couldn’t be there that day,
and then I cried over my dear friend Chris being there for this most important
day and how we had missed so many years of each other’s lives. It was pathetic.
Cutting the cake, and Ava waiting for Todd and I to smash
cake in each other’s faces (we didn’t)… and then she picked up some cake and smushed it on Todd. And my mother-in-law and I cut the cake and
handed it out with Ava’s help. There wasn’t
a scrap of food leftover. Not a single
crumb of wedding cake. There was no
structure to our event… flowed the way it did… there were no speeches except
for my brother-in-law’s which only a handful of us heard… and we forgot to do
our first dance together – because we were having so much fun, and because
neither one of us by that time could remember what song we picked. (It was
Jason Mraz – I Won’t Give Up.)
And then the day ended with family members being carried out
by their loved ones, too drunk to walk, and ordering pizza for everyone still
hanging on because it was now 8 hours later and we were hungry and then driving home to put the kids to bed. And going to sleep with 8,000 bobby pins and
20 p0unds of hair product in that “do,” waking up in the morning to a wonderful
and heartfelt note from my brother-in-law and nephews, who spent the night and
left before we all woke up.
That was our day, a year ago. I’d do it all again, including the “yes” to
that first date he asked me on over 25 years ago. But tonight I spent in that very same
courtyard, celebrating the other man in my life – the first man who ever loved
me, and who set the precedent for the one who would take his place beside me so
many years later. My dad.
The biggest blessing of all that day, was that everyone who
was there was touched by our story, by who we were, who we are, and by the
miracle of love that never ends. I am
blessed. I love you, boy-in-the-leather-jacket-who-drove-too-fast-and-made-me-never-forget-you.
All along I believed I would find you... time has brought your heart to me...I have loved for you for a thousand years..I'll love you for a thousand more.
Best. Day. Ever.
