Happy Memories Abound

A year ago right now I was wearing pretty much what I'm wearing now - a t-shirt and gym shorts. I was just back from Wally World, where I'd run to purchase a full-length mirror.  The bridesmaids had been shuffled from our bedroom to the big guest room and somehow, jumping up and down to see how their dresses looked in the mirror above the sink just didn't cut it.

That full length mirror had been on my list for months; I didn't plan to be shopping for it three hours before the wedding.  No one in the store seemed at all interested in the fact that my little girl was getting married; they were oblivious to the joy.  It didn't seem possible, somehow.  It was oozing from every pore of my being.

I was a reluctant late comer to the excitement; worrying over the weather, over being the hostess, over making it perfect without overwhelming, it all kept my glee in check.  But a year ago there was not a cloud in the sky, there was no suspiciously cool breeze tossing the acacia willow from side to side, there was nothing to cause a worry.  I smiled, I watched the bridesmaids put rhinestone sparkles on my pink Converse

shown here in my favorite wedding picture, and I loved my girl.

There wasn't very much for the mother of the bride to do; the bestest friends were in charge in the getting ready room, Patty was sweeping the last bits of decoration debris from the floor, the groom and his family had yet to arrive. I was at loose ends. I could sit down and revel, remembering.....

...  her Pippi Longstocking phase, braids held out to the sides by pipe cleaners, her eyes dancing with dreams of a bicycle-powered-flying-machine, or, perhaps, magical shoe-brushes for washing the floors....

.... her scene stealing performance as Nana in Peter Pan, sweltering under the hottest costume ever created in a trailer on a back road in Sonoma....

.... her infatuation with Murphy the Wonder Dog, the least intelligent but most loved canine in the world....

.... her insistence that SIR was her friend.... nothing more... her best friend.... the one she spoke to every night.... but really, Mom, stop making more of it....

and even though I'm sure she is right, sure she knows better, sure she is the arbiter of who was feeling what, when, I will always disagree.  I saw how he looked at her the first time I met him, holding five of her suitcases and not at all troubled by her inability to start walking down the stairs.  

"It's all right. It's how she is."

Right then and there I knew what has only been confirmed in the ten years which have passed.  He loved her then and he loves her now.  There's nothing more that a mother could ask.

Thanks for insisting on the wedding, SIR.  A union like yours required a celebration like that - there was just too much love not to share it.