Chicken Soup for the Bride's Soul (29 page)

“Oh, calm down, dear! No one’s looking! Just let me tweeze these little hairs you’ve got, so David doesn’t think he’s marrying Groucho Marx.”

CLOSE TO HOME ©
John McPherson. Reprinted by permission of UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE. All rights reserved.

Final Approval

A
m I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?

Abraham Lincoln

I rapped the serpent-head doorknocker, noting the uncanny symbolism when the door opened, creaking like Herman Munster’s. There stood Miss Kay’s father dressed in what looked like laboratory coveralls. It was a first date—the clumsy ceremony that begins with the dreaded handshake and introduction to “Daddy.”

My grasp was dutifully subservient and his was firm enough to cause my knuckles to fuse. My fingers wrung red with pain, I knew it was just a form of punishment for requesting his daughter’s company that evening. I remember thinking my black leather jacket probably sent the wrong message. But it was stylish, not the kind with excessive zippers.

As we left, I sensed Eddie’s beady eyes following me, and even the clap of the heavy front door didn’t free me from his stare. I looked back and saw the Venetian blind tilted up at one corner. His laser pupils pierced the darkness, causing the paint on my Chevy to sizzle and smoke.

Thus I survived the dreaded introduction to Mr. Eddie Banks.

Miss Kay and I dated nonstop for the next two years and I endured cold reception after cold reception from her father. When we had any conversation at all, it was like an oral exam. I formed each word carefully, not wanting to expose any unnecessary clues about my life that Eddie could probe.

I felt ashamed about my past. My parents divorced when I was an infant then went their separate ways, leaving me behind. Raised like an orphan—shuffled among relatives and living out of a footlocker—I feared my gypsy-like life wouldn’t pass muster against the standards Eddie set for his daughter’s beau.

So our courtship went by the book. Eddie’s book.

I had Kay home by curfew and never called on the phone during mealtimes. I brought jonquils to Mrs. Eddie on her birthday, and once raked their yard while they were at work. I piled the leaves in two giant pyramids at the curb, and had them both burning when Eddie got home. He stood on the patio like General Patton—a Lucky Strike crimped between his teeth. The slight nod of his head was approval enough for me. It made me glad I had skipped fishing with my friends that day.

Then came the awful night when I asked for Kay’s hand in marriage. The down-on-one-knee part went okay, but when I produced the rings of betrothal all hell broke loose in a mocking slur of my words.

“She can be ‘re-gaged,’” Eddie said, “but there’ll be no ringely-dingelies on my daughter’s hand!”

I snapped the ring box shut so fast I nearly lost a finger and stuffed it back into my pocket like a wary shoplifter. With his quivering finger pointing to the door, I left while Kay still pleaded for mercy. Obviously, there were few options left for two star-struck lovers.

I devised a plan. My brother lived in Florida and, through friends, got me a job. He even gave up his extra bedroom to help defray my expenses. I saved my first four paychecks for our nest egg, albeit meager, and sent for my bride-to-be. Ours was a whirlwind elopement.

Miss Kay packed a suitcase and left a note on the refrigerator saying she was spending the night with a girlfriend. With trembling legs and thumping heart, she took a cab to the airport and slumped down in the seat to avoid detection. Three hours later my brother and I met the plane and whisked Miss Kay away to Georgia where marriage was legal for eighteen-year-olds.

The sign read “Welcome to Donaldsonville.” It was just a sleepy Georgia town but a noted marriage mill where required blood tests could be obtained at the Gulf Service Station. Our marriage was performed auctioneer-fashion.

For a twenty-dollar fee, we got a tinfoil-stamped certificate and a “honeymoon kit” from the judge. It contained samples of Midol, Tampax, Vaseline, Mercurochrome and Kleenex.

The phone was ringing when we got to my brother’s house. It was Kay’s frantic mother. She warned that Eddie, together with the Texas Rangers, had launched a manhunt. Whatever hopes I had for a boom-bah wedding night were dashed; instead, we spent it hiding under the bed and, in my new role as son-in-law, I slipped into an uneasy relationship with Kay’s father.

The years zipped past like the jerky, hurried characters in silent movies, and the birth of our two boys formed the bookends of our lives together. Surprisingly, mutual respect replaced the simple coexistence that once had been the tone of my relationship with Eddie. Don’t ask me how it happened. Maybe it was a byproduct of the peace grandkids bring.

We talked often about childhood experiences. In those conversations, I finally disclosed my past. Eventually, Eddie shared his. I learned that Eddie was only fourteen when his father died. He supported his mother and four sisters with meager earnings from the Depression-era Civil Conservation Corps. He, too, had had a rough boyhood and survived an austere, “foot-locker” existence.

Our exchanges revealed we had more similarities than differences. And the greatest similarity of all was our mutual love for his daughter.

In 1993, I was at Eddie’s side when he died. That day he appointed me an honorary member of the Banks family. He leaned over in his bed to whisper a long-held secret in my ear:

“I hate to admit it,” he said, “but you’re my favorite son-in-law.”

I told him it wasn’t lost on me that his daughter was an only child. He closed his eyes, pursed his lips in a tight smile and took his last breath with my hand clasping his.

His grip was firm enough to cause my knuckles to fuse.

Lad Moore

Just Like Hazel

I was a nervous bride. I couldn’t wait to be in my husband’s arms and life, but I was leaving everything familiar. I was moving from the city to the country. I was leaving my small family behind and becoming part of an enormous, close-knit clan.

I stood at the reception while my husband made his way around the room. Another difference. I was shy, unsure. My husband had never met a stranger. His entire family was confident and outgoing. It was easy to get lost in a family like that when you’re a person like me. I counted on two hands the people I knew well.

We decided to hold the wedding in Richard’s hometown. His family accounted for most of the invitations we had so carefully inscribed. Plus his church friends and neighbors— the people who had known and loved him since boyhood. It was simply easier to transport my family of five and my closest friends to his hometown than to ship an entire community to my city.

Would we make it? Would I regret my decision the morning I woke up on a farm? Would I regret trading my slick green Mustang for a John Deere tractor?

The panic must have been marked clearly on my face. Richard’s grandfather slipped beside me and placed an arm around my waist.

“How are you?”

“Fine,” I lied.

Digging in his pants pocket, he pulled out his wallet and held out a faded picture. “Isn’t she beautiful?”

I studied the picture. She wasn’t a classic beauty but I saw spunk in her dark eyes. Her hair was coiffed in the style of a long-gone past. And she was beautiful to Richard’s grandfather. I loved that. “Yes, she’s beautiful,” I agreed.

“When we met we were just kids. We’ve been through a lot together.”

I shook my head knowingly; Richard had told me all about them. They survived the Great Depression. They parented five children. They lost two teenagers—within three months of each other. He farmed and held a town job, working from dawn until sundown, to make sure his family was comfortable and cared for.

His voice cracked and he smiled—identical to the warm smile that had captivated my heart when I first met my husband. “Every year that goes by I love her more. That’s what takes you through the hard times.” He put his hand over mine. “If you will love my grandson just half as much as I love Hazel, you’ll make it.”

Tears dampened my eyes at the thought of this legacy. I could sit and worry about the differences between my husband and me. Or I could simply love the man that was my soul mate. I chose love.

Grandpa had a stroke in their sixty-second year of marriage; his Hazel nursed him. He couldn’t speak but his eyes said volumes as she gently bathed and fed him. She took care of his every need, working from dawn to sundown to make sure he was comfortable and cared for until his death four years later. I wish I could talk to Grandpa Franklin once more. I’d thank him for comforting a nervous young bride. Then I’d tell him I love his grandson every bit as much as he loved Hazel.

T. Suzanne Eller

All in the Family

W
e are each other’s business; we are each other’s magnitude and bond.

Gwendolyn Brooks

“When you get married, babe, you marry the whole family.”

That was my mother’s caution to me as a young teenager. At the time I thought she said it to encourage me to get rid of my then-boyfriend, and maybe she did. In any case, it was a warning I didn’t understand until my wedding day.

He was my best friend. He said he loved me when we were sixteen, and I laughed it off. At seventeen, he said he was going to marry me, and I laughed it off. At eighteen he kissed me, and I stopped laughing—but I didn’t really believe he was serious for several more stormy years.

I wanted—in the tradition of my family—to move far away, start over, maybe visit my relatives every couple years. So I moved out west and went to school. He wanted, he said, to stay in Michigan for his family, but he was always there for me when I needed him, which was often.

After a few years I realized the kind of love we had was the kind I’d been looking for. The kind you keep, even if you don’t really see the merits of staying in Michigan indefinitely. I returned home, convinced we could overcome any obstacle, and we made plans to get married no matter what.

But there was the matter of our families.

My family was small, suburban, a hardworking set of parents, my brother and me; we all accepted our new member without a hitch. His family, on the other hand, intimidated me. I strived to avoid them—and there were a lot of them to avoid.

Every holiday they converged in confusing, noisy crowds. They were rich and poor, black and white and Hispanic, city-dwellers or not, from every walk and in every stage of life. But they knew all about each other and hugged and laughed and talked at each gathering like they’d never been apart.

They scared me to death.

They ignored me, too, at first. But when I’d been to a few of the same special occasions, signifying I was more than just a passing fad, they started paying attention. I dreaded holidays. I would be patted, hugged, pinched, asked personal questions, given unsolicited opinions and expected to remember the names of five or six generations of people who looked and acted nothing alike.

My husband-to-be just smiled when I talked about it, and told me to give it time.

Even though I trusted him, I couldn’t imagine staying in Michigan, within reach of the whole mad horde of them. But when we announced our engagement, I realized I didn’t know the half of it. I learned the hard way that big families aren’t just about holidays.

Suddenly I was an insider. That meant not just Christmas parties and weddings, but a whole host of new duties I’d never heard of before—all of which seemed dreadfully embarrassing.

There were funerals, baby showers, special masses and kids’ birthday parties. Never mind that you didn’t know the deceased or weren’t religious or had never heard of the kid. You were family, so you went. It was as simple as that.

I found myself mumbling and patting the hand of a dying old woman (whom I’d only met once before) in a hospital bed, shedding real tears over the casket of an old friend of the family I’d only ever heard stories about, and holding a newborn (something I’d never done) while I asked, sheepishly, to be reminded of his mother’s name.

Planning the wedding was like nothing I’d expected, either. Somehow I thought that my fiancé and I would do it, but I couldn’t have been more mistaken. Everybody had an opinion, and it wasn’t always phrased as an opinion, either.

I was lectured on religion, seating, clothing and just about every aspect of the ceremony and reception, and also on the zillion “traditions” that had to be in place, many of which I’d never seen or heard, or I secretly thought silly or humiliating. The guest list reached 400, and my family accounted for only thirty of those.

My fiancé was willing to let his relatives do whatever they wanted. “We’ll enjoy it no matter what,” he said.

So, on the wedding day, too far in love to pay attention to my misgivings about the family or my mother’s reminder of long ago, I found myself standing at an altar (the mere idea of a secular wedding nearly caused fatal heart attacks of several older aunts), wearing a beautiful white dress (“But of course you’ll wear white, dear”), and getting ready to swear my fidelity to Our Gigs: my best friend and true love on the one hand; their favored son on the other.

When he said “I do,” a hush fell over the crowd. Every eye turned to me—most of them probing for any sign that what I was about to pledge wasn’t the absolute truth.