A wedding; a marriage

On Saturday afternoon at 4:30pm Lauren and I were married before a small gathering of friends and family on the property we had prepared for the last year. It went off with a hitch.

We were seen unto the pouring-forth of our conjoined life by children, sisters, friends from small times, patient parents, and a man who is quietly dying. (He forced himself to be well enough to come. He is not pictured here.)

The living room floor joists did not collapse into the basement under the weight of guests who sought pre-ceremony air conditioning. The toilet did not capsize from its gasket. The barmaid was swift and kind; the appetizer station (my purview) was cold and bountiful. A tray of emergency cheese, ferried upstairs to stabilize the bride, a daughter of Wisconsin, restored equanimity to her and her cohort of Hair & Makeup specialists. The groom made small talk in the driveway with a friend from fifth grade who is now a firefighter in Seattle.

Charley Crockett's I Am Not Afraid began things. The Zombies' This Will Be Our Year saw us back down the aisle. In the middle, we were in the moment, unconcerned with crowd or priest or drone-of-ex, in love and alone together, as we are everywhere, but there was a greater openness and feeling of potential between us than perhaps even when we met three years ago.

Some rice told us it was time to kiss. Later that night, we signed government forms so that I could get on that sweet, sweet spousal medical insurance.

We're off to Rome, Naples, and Amalfi soon enough. (Got any recommendations?) For now, we're enjoying calm in the house again, while the last partygoer quietly deals with Covid down in the guest room. Tonight we left a homemade doner kebab wrap in front of his door, dressed with my special wedding dijonnaise. I notice that all my favorite coffee mugs have disappeared. I hope he is ok.  

Here are the vows I declared to Lauren during our ceremony. In order to carry them off, I mentally told myself, "You are Kurt Vonnegut." That gave me both the presence, confidence, and lubricity of delivery to really sell the goods.

***

Lauren, That we agreed it was not just exciting, but logical, to save a listing old farmhouse, while simultaneously reinventing our careers, and managing a travel schedule that would leave Odysseus panting — meant each of us had found our needle in a haystack.

You and I knew this long before, of course. Some say as early as that first fateful walk among the marshes and oaks, where I met a woman with a playful imagination, a beguiling energy, and eyes whose vocabulary sends the great poets packing.  

This place where we’ve spent the last one year and one week — an old house that was built before World War One, the circular saw, and the cheeseburger lunch (two of which have been indispensable to the stability of our bond) — has had one particular, remarkable effect on us that I notice every night. It may seem small, but it unmistakably means everything, and it is this: after sixteen straight hours of the things we do for pay, and then the carpentry-by-moonlight, the electrical-by-flashlight, and the endless, endless painting — as we lay in bed, as we always do, chatting for an hour or more before the lights go out, I notice that, at some point yet again, we’ve begun holding hands.

And the next day we start anew and mostly refreshed, with the desire to do right by one another in this grand project which makes no illusion about being both a colossal metaphor, and the literal roof under which we will go through our ages together, building a happy basis for this inexplicable miracle to which we awaken each day. In this home, you have shown me how true partnership feels, and what it expects, and how it rewards equal sincerity.   

These three years with you have been a wonderful way to experience the phenomenon of love, to piece together the twin-language which identifies a couple that is not so much new as reunited, each day building calmly on the last, every hour embroidered with the unique new patterns of lives that have become one life. 

Lauren, here before the people who have traveled from far and wide and deep through time to affirm that our love is true, and offer us their ongoing support, I give you myself for the rest of my days, and will be your loyal husband in all the seasons and cycles of life.  

***

Next week, it's back to non-me content. Probably. You never know, I might get hit by a plane or something and star in a cool gurney video I just have to share. But not having a house to restore, or a wedding to operate, has just put a whole lot of time back in my schedule, and I plan to be at my desk. Which I really need to share a picture of, because my desk is a piece of lumber across the arms of an upholstered chair a cat peed in a long time ago.