This is from the memoir. Marriage isn't made or un-made in courts, but elsewhere....
I add my breath to
your breath
that our days may be
long on earth.
--Laguna Pueblo prayer
Unlike
cars, we have all learned that marriages are only interesting when they break
down.
Broken down
marriages are the stuff of movies and books, TV talk shows and Hollywood celebrities. A good marriage is boring, everybody knows that.
But I get
to look at the faces of each couple every time I perform a wedding and
I believe that there has never been anyone who wanted anything other than that most boring of things, a good
marriage. Their faces give it all away. There is just a moment—it’s hard to
describe—when naked hope seems to make their faces glow silvery and luminous.
It is a
private moment and I am a privileged witness. But getting that shining glimpse
of palpable hope almost always makes up for all the taxing parts of getting a
couple actually wed.
That said, weddings
are one of the most onerous parts of parish ministry.
First you
have to go through all that pre-marital stuff with the moony-eyed couple in the
pastor’s office. I like to keep it simple. I ask them to tell me their love
story which, with the reciprocal narcissism of the deeply-in- love, they are
always more than happy to do.
They sit
haunch-by-haunch on the couch in my office, well-groomed and dressed—they’re
meeting with the pastor, so I guess they figure they ought to wear their
Sunday-best. Each of them takes turns narrating the story of how they met, how
they courted, what speed bumps they hit, how he—or more rarely, she—proposed.
Often there
is a ring story. I love the ring stories. Grooms can be very inventive in the
ways they present their diamonds. One of them proposed in a hansom cab in Central Park, though it didn’t go quite according to his
carefully-detailed plan. Just as they were about to get into the hansom cab,
the groom realized they had left the camera in the hotel room. He insisted they
go back and get it. The bride was freezing. Why can’t we just take the damn
ride and forget about the camera, she wanted to know.
No, we need it. No, we don’t. Yes, we do. So they went back to the
hotel, then back once again to the hansom cab and by now the bride was not only
freezing, but pissed off, too. It might not have been the best moment to
propose, the groom said, but he did it anyway. And he had the cab driver take a
picture of them, the bride happy, contrite, teary-eyed and glad they had gone
back to get the camera.
Another
groom gave his girlfriend a gift certificate for a manicure a few days before
he planned on surprising her with the ring. She was offended—what did he think
was so bad about her nails just the way they were? He thought she needed to
wear nail polish? She passed it along
to a friend who actually enjoyed getting manicures.
Another
groom proposed at the very top of Sacre-Coeur in Paris. Another hid the ring inside a
Plexi-glass cube with filled with Post-it notes on which he had written out his
proposal.
So anyway,
all the while the couple is telling me their love stories and their ring
stories, they are sitting close enough to lean in to each other, to rub each
other’s knees, little gestures that don’t seem to them too inappropriate to do
in front of a person of the cloth who, no doubt, wouldn’t understand the first
thing about sexual desire.
When older
people get married they usually want less of the pageantry and folderol of a
storybook wedding. But younger people often want the all garish accessories of
the day: the sappy unity candle (it doesn't always light); the white paper carpet (somebody always
trips); the Purcell “Trumpet Voluntary” or, worse, “The Pachelbel Canon”
poorly-played; a bevy of bridesmaids wearing colors found only in bridal shops
and gelato stands; groomsmen anxious for the open bar.
In the
cases of these pageant-weddings, there comes a time when, late in the game, one
or the other of them has had it up to here
with wedding details. The spiral notebook they have been using to track their
progress is looking dog-eared. There is a problem with one or more of the
relatives. Or the reception site, or the transportation arrangements. Or all of
the above.
It happened
with my own wedding: The pastor who was to assist at the ceremony got caught
groping a thirteen-year-old boy and was removed from his job. The friend who
had agreed to cater the reception severed a nerve in her hand a week before the
big day. My in-laws were in a train wreck coming up from New York City for the wedding weekend. My
mother became mysteriously ill and had to skip the rehearsal dinner.
It sleeted
the day of the wedding. The reception was in a gallery hung with oil paintings
of dismembered heads and other body parts rendered in a style to make Gericault
proud. Not only that, but it had been a posthumously-mounted show—in memory of
the painter who had committed suicide the year before. If omens mean anything
it should not be surprising that we divorced.
But I am
generally sympathetic to all the little wedding details that can go awry.
Because I know that, one way or another, I’ll get them married.
