Beloved community wedding 1

Grandsons in formal attire

     Our wedding involved our family and friends every step of the way.  Early on, brother-in-law John got himself ordained in order to perform the ceremony.  Sheila volunteered to be  the wedding planner, thank God.
     Fuey presided over the guest book, aided by Maxine the flower girl. Maxine urged people to sign and reassured Fuey that ,"I know these people." Charlie hung up guest's coats, and made them feel welcome.  Sammy accepted wedding presents and cards.  Jack, Charlie, and Sam rented tuxedos for the occasion.

John officiating

   Fuey's daughter Janet Dove came up from California to make music for us.   Janet's rich, mellow voice sang us up the aisle with Give Yourself to Love.

Janet, Judy and Fuey

     Kelli and Randy, from the world's best neighbors faction, did the readings.  Kelli read  from George Eliot:  "What greater thing is there for two human souls than to feel that they are joined together to strengthen each other in all labour, to minister to each other in all sorrow, to share with each other in all gladness, to be one with each other in the silent unspoken memories." Randy read a Shoshone love poem:

Randy and Kelli

    Fair is the white star of the twilight,
    and the sky clear at the day's end,
    but she is fairer, and she is dearer.
    She, my heart's friend.

   Fair is the white star of twilight,
   and the moon roving  to the sky's end;
  but she is fairer, better worth loving,
   She, my heart's friend.

Paul and David with Simone

   I was crying already.  Judy, much more of a ham, was fine.  John asked us each if we consented to marry each other.  After we  said "I will," he asked the gathered friends and family if they would "do all in their power to uphold these two women in their marriage?"   Their "We will" was loud and joyous.

Jack gets ready for ring duty

    We had our wedding rings in a small pouch.  Grandson Jack passed the pouch around from row to row, while each guest put his silent wish or blessing into the rings.  Janet sang Love Me Tender . and then Battle Hymn of Love, which she had learned specially for the wedding as a gift for me.  I was worried about this part of the service, but Judy gave good directions to the congregation.  Jack did a splendid and dignified  job of moving the rings along.

Vows

   When it came time to say our vows, Paul, David, Betsy and Les stepped forward.  Simone was asleep on David's shoulder.    I started crying and murmured, "I knew I couldn't do this." Judy shot back, "Its not that hard."
   John declared us married, and Janet sang us back down the aisle with Can I Have this Dance for the Rest of My Life, which she had learned  for the wedding as a gift for Judy.
    Then we had a party.

Wedding

John's words of wisdom

Married

 Reader, I married her.

Crying during vows

Bridget preparing the minister

Blooming before the wedding

Megan gave the ultimate toast

Sullivan sisters rock

Younger generation dressed up

Family

Bridget's photo of Lucy and Maxine, the flower girl

Christmas

Becky at Christmas

Straight tree, crooked stand

    We are Charlie Brown traditionalists at Christmas, Judy and I.  Our tree gets smaller every year, but we still do the traditional wrestling  and struggling to get it straight.  This year, the tree stands straight but the stand is slanted.
    My favorite outdoor tree is no prize, either. We have some magnificent firs and cedars in Oregon, but this is not one of them.  Without its lights, the cedar  outside the Milwaukie City Hall  is one of the homeliest trees around.  Early in December there is a rowdy parade  of revelers carrying umbrellas, and then the tree is lit with great ceremony. It is transformed into a Christmas beacon for drivers on US 99 W, originally known as the Super Highway.  I like to glide down the Super Highway and crane my neck for a glimpse of the homely tree that makes me happy.

Super Highway beacon

Homely tree

    Every year around the 18th of December, I start longing for my family.  I tell Judy, "I just want them close around me, like puppies piling all over each other."  I read children's Christmas picture books  and wish I were reading them to the grandchildren.  Usually, we make do with phone calls and Skype.  But this year, they are here! Almost all of the family is here! This is my happiest Christmas ever.

Homemade ornaments

Yoga on my mother's rug

Erin after yoga class

     After yoga class I forget about The List for a little while.   The List is with me from  an hour after I wake in the mornings until I am too tired in the evenings to think about it anymore.  There's nothing exotic or even interesting about The List; it's just a litany of things that need to be done.   It often amazes me that I pay such constant attention to something so boring.
 Yoga opens my mind while it strengthens my body.  Erin, our teacher, guides us through warm ups, poses and relaxation with humor and a sense of wonder.  We creak away and don't complain. I feel great afterwards as I haul my mats, strap, and cushion to the car.    Last week I came home from class and announced to Judy, "If anything will free me from my inner tyrant, it's yoga."

Not what I look like

     At home I do stretches and a few  poses  most mornings  on a green and orange hooked rug that my mother made in the 1960s.  When my Maryland sisters were clearing out my parents' house, I didn't want that rug.  None of my sisters or my brother or any relative or neighbor wanted it either.  The rug was on the list of homeless treasures that my sister Florrie tried so mellifluously to persuade us to take.
     She started with, "Maggie, that big ugly gold mirror would look perfect in your house."
"Florrie, you've never seen my house."
     "I know, but it would look good in your hall.  If you won't take the mirror, at least take the rug."
     I intended to give the rug away to a young  relative who had just set up housekeeping.  Something made me hesitate.  The rug stood rolled in a corner for years, until I began to use it for yoga.  Now I treasure it, and think every morning of my mother and  the many women (Auntie Ellen, Aunt Faye, Aunt Jeanette, Aunt Sister, Aunt Helen, and more) who cared for me.

My mother's hooked rug

     Ordinary objects, even things that are new to me, are beginning to take on value from my encounters with the people who have owned them before.  I bought tablecloths for the wedding from a young woman who advertised them on Craigslist.  She was  happy in her life and in her memories of her wedding.  She  enthused about two old women getting married, "I hope my grandchildren will look back and say, 'What was the big fuss all about?'"   I look forward to using those tablecloths and to passing them on.  Now they have a history; they are more than just covers for tables.
  
  

Already invited

Robert carves the turkey

     We planned to go to Sequim for Thanksgiving.  However,  many of the family there had sore throats , drippy heads and unhappy bellies.  We wavered, hoping the crud would clear up and we could visit among the non-contagious.  We finally decided late Tuesday night that we would not make the drive on Wednesday.  We would celebrate Thanksgiving here.
     Here's the good part:  when Judy called our good neighbor Janet to tell her we were not leaving, she said, "You're already invited."  Even better, we already knew that we were already invited.  What a richness of good friends and openhearted neighbors we have to give thanks for!

Thanksgiving athletes

     Some people are active on Thanksgiving.  Paul's family ran in a Turkey trot and played a pickup football game at the neighborhoods park.  We were strict traditionalists; we watched football on TV .  Arnold, Judy's # 1 canine fan, turned fickle.  After dinner, when Judy was right in the room watching football, Arnold snuggled up to another guest.  Judy was so full and happy that she didn't even feel spurned.

Arnold's normal favorite seat

Arnold with George

  Meanwhile, we are preparing for the wedding. Sheila early on designated herself the wedding planner.  ( Thank goodness, or else I would be more of an absent-minded mess than I am. )   Our loved ones  want to participate. John got himself ordained on the Internet as  the minister.  Betsy and Les will stand up for us.  Janet is flying up from California to sing.  Rob and Nancy have volunteered to take photos.   Mike, the best meat cook I know, offered to make barbecue.  Jack will be in charge of the rings.  Charlie and Josh will take coats.  Megan will create the table decorations.  Judy has created a whole transport team from volunteers eager to help.
     And the family are coming.  I can't believe they are all coming, in the middle of winter, from so far away.  As my brother Don says, "You know the Sullivans.  We show up."

Rosemary

Rosemary with Josh, 1998

Wedding day

     Rosemary had been declining into dementia for the past five years.  A month ago, after she fell and broke a hip, we knew it would be a matter of weeks before she died.   Her death  leaves me with a sad dissonance:  how can she not be there?  How can we go to Sequim, where we sat at her  table for so many Thanksgiving dinners, and not see Rosemary?
    I first knew her in the sixties when my  sister Rose married her son John.   She had raised her four boys in Maryland, in a house that backed up to a forest.

Getting around Greenbelt 1958

    "How did you ever deal with four  boys born within 6 years?" I asked her , when I felt challenged by my two boys.
    "I sent them out into the woods to play,"  she replied.
    She loved nature, and  studied zoology in college.  She taught her sons to observe the plants and creatures that they brought home from the woods.  She took them to the bi-weekly bird talks at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History.   In the summers, she would take the boys and sometimes their friends to her sister's property in Ontario.  There they bushwhacked blackberries and built trails to turn the overgrown, wild land into a camp.

     She packed for the family's camping trips alongside rivers where they  paddled canoes and kayaks down the rapids.  She was a starter and organizer of white water races throughout the United States and Europe, supporting her sons and grandsons in the sport.  Black and white  home movies from those days show heart-stopping images of small, fragile boats  being tumbled and tossed by raging rivers.  Rosemary used to chuckle when I gasped.

Thanksgiving at Rosemary's 1997

Rosemary in Sequim

    At age 66 she left  Maryland and her work with white water sports. She moved across the county to Sequim, where two of her sons live. It is not easy to start a new life in a new place in middle age.  Rosemary did it with zest and grace.  She continued to teach children about nature at the Marine Life center and at the Dungeness Audubon River Center.  She volunteered weekly at the Olympic National Park.  She made new friends and travelled with  old friends.

Rosemary and fans

    I was lucky to know Rosemary better after she moved to Sequim.  She introduced me to the plants in her yard, and took me on a tour of  nearby Port Angeles.  She showed me the Contemporary Arts Center and the Feiro Marine Life Center where she was a docent.  The highlight of the tour was her favorite madrona tree.   For many years she hosted Thanksgiving dinner at her small house, welcoming me and Judy and my sons and daughters-in-law, as well as her own brood.   The day after Thanksgiving usually featured a  trip to the studio and sale of her favorite potter.
    Rosemary's stories were always interesting and clear.  They were also rigidly sequential and complete.  Once, when I asked her how her sister came to live in Canada, she began with, "You know the War of 1812..."
      When Rosemary could no longer drive, her son John made a special sheepskin -lined rickshaw seat attached to his bicycle.  He pedaled Rosemary around town, softening the sting of her lament, "My sons took my car away." When we visited, she loved to have our dog Lily sit in her lap.

Rosemary with Lily and Ponder Bear

    As her memory faded, Rosemary went through a time of strong anxiety.  She was  frantic at times, sure  that she would be late for the train to take her back to the Eastern Shore of Maryland to take care of her mother. She was plagued by the sharpening pain of headaches and  bursitis, and confused about when she last saw the doctor.  Eventually, she moved to a memory care home.   Judy gave her  a large, soft stuffed bear who had lived with us for years.  Her family brought her milkshakes and cookies and visits from a Santa whom  she couldn't name but knew she loved.

John as Santa

    Then, in her last years, she entered a new stage.  She couldn't tell us, but it looked like she had no more anxiety and  no more pain.  It seemed like a distilled essence of Rosemary, when love is the only thing that counts. When I last saw her, Rosemary was in the dining room of the memory care home.  She became fascinated by the chickadee design on my shirt.  She beamed at John and hugged him and held on to him. She looked happy, basking in love and shining love back out.
  


  

Wedding plans

  

  Judy and I are getting married. It will be a small family wedding, but my big family is coming.  Brother-in-law John long ago volunteered to be the marrying minister.  Paul and David booked their plane tickets right away.  My sisters are coming from Maryland and my brother from Texas and all the grandchildren.   I keep saying to Judy, "They're coming!  They're all coming!" My head is spinning and my heart is happy.

 The bramble and the rose intertwine

   We are marrying in December so that the grandchildren can come.  (You know you are old when you plan your wedding around your grandchildren's school schedules.)  Sheila has designated herself the wedding planner.  That's a really good thing, because I can get frazzled with details and the thought of playing bridezilla makes me weary.   I like planing the service, but need lots of help with the rest of the event.  Fortunately, many people are offering suggestions, support, and help.    Our friend Ruth offered her large and lovely house on the Columbia River, but we ultimately decided that we needed more space. We'll have the ceremeony an the reception at the Unitarian Church in Vancouver.  Judy and Sheila are nattering about decorations.   Janet Dove, a fine singer,  volunteered to fly up from California to provide music.
    I was checking out hotels for the out-of towners, walking around a facility with a young woman from the sales office.   I told her how pleased I am that the family is coming.
 "Who is getting married?" she asked.
 "I am."
" How long have you been together?"
"Eighteen years."
"What made you decide to do it now?"
"Our marriage is legal here now."
 She had tears in her eyes.    
    We spent a sweet afternoon buying wedding rings.  I don't think the  jeweler had worked with a same-sex couple before, and certainly not  with a couple where one said to the other,   "Honey, do you need your oxygen?"   Judy's ring is silver and mine is gold.  I try it on every day.

My heart sings