Happy Anniversary

Today is our wedding anniversary. A really special day. It's about the love and the family and the public recognition of our relationship. It was also the one year post-chemo date, and it is the Feast of Diana and the Ascension of Mary so August 15 is a a really propitious day.

This morning we read our wedding vows to each other and the poems that were our gifts.

We will go to The Pruyn House today to walk through the school house where we were married. The memories are all about fun: Mr. Breslin using the old chalkboard to diagram "With this ring, I thee wed" and explaining to guests the exact parts of speech. The moment when John's  brother quite elegantly explained that his reading was in the car and went to get it while we all talked. That is probably --after our vows--my favorite part of the wedding--it was so calm and loving and fun for everyone.

We are alive, in love, growing, laughing and making love in the time of cancer.

Wedding Poem for our Anniversary

Thank You, My Fate

Great humility fills me,
great purity fills me,
I make love with my dear
as if I made love dying
as if I made love praying,
tears pour
over my arms and his arms.
I don’t know whether this is joy
or sadness, I don’t understand
what I feel, I’m crying,
I’m crying, it’s humility
as if I were dead,
gratitude, I thank you, my fate,
I’m unworthy, how beautiful
my life.


— Anna Swir
Translated from the Polish by Czeslaw Milosz

Le Marriage

We are married. A small wedding. Our families and the close friends who have been our support for several years. Laughter, tears, cancer as a wedding guest—everyone recognized cancer as one of the attendants. We wrote vows that included being faithful—yes, I know—and that included “in sickness and in health”—knowing what that really means. We had great food, a lot of poetry, books, statues of Mary, our dear stuffed Babar and blue ribbons everywhere.

Then we flew to Paris and walked and ate and walked and ate and made love with windows wide open in the City of Lights.

Married

Yesterday, August 15th, John and I were married. A small ceremony in a school house. Family and friends with us. Beautiful flowers. Lots of laughter. Great cake. And this poem:

“Afternoon, in a Back Yard on Chestnut Street,” by David Keller


Here are a man and a woman, being married.

The entire world of summer lawns

holds its breath for the event. The trees

around them are lovely, displaying the small

breath and motions of August. The couple glance

at one another. Where has the moon gone,

the requisite moon? Nearby, a mother

begs her child, “Try to remember;

when did you have it last?” Oh,

impossible mystery. Where is joy

when it is not here? Time says nothing.

These things can happen, and will,

while children at the yard’s border play

among grown-ups tasting the summer’s wine.

Memory looks at its watch, smiling.

The moon will begin to come round

the way it always did but we’d forgotten.

The lovers touch hands and think of

some place they want to be, and go there.

The child, happy at last,

has remembered where its lost ball is.

In the garden the pink phlox and the lilies

show off, between the old moon

here in the hot sky and the one to come.

Everyone hugs or shakes hands

and walks off toward the future, waving.

The man and woman look at each other.

They know it means happiness, this year. They do.

Joy

We are writing our wedding invitation. We each write a draft and compare notes. They are almost identical. We both used the word Joy. It is the perfect word and has been from the start. Not happiness, not peace. But it is Joy.

Marriage and Weddings

I loved Elizabeth Gilbert, “Eat. Pray. Love” Read it, listened to it: God and pleasure and faith and fear and overcoming fear. Yes it helped that she had a big house to sell and a huge book advance. But Ok that does not counter the humor and good grace of her book. I especially loved when she had everyone in the universe co-sign her prayer to have her divorce end and to have peace with her ex. And that water tower scene in India. Again turning that ex over to God—higher selves meeting and releasing.

In this week’s New Yorker magazine a review of Gilbert’s second memoir, “Committed” about marriage and reluctantly marrying the man she fell in love with at the end of book one. At the end of the book review this great line:

“There is good reason to end such stories with weddings, buoyant celebrations of love. Because what follows a wedding is a marriage. And marriage is an institution, not a party.”

After the Wedding

We had a great time in Baltimore. Stayed with an old friend who is like a sister. I am at home in her home and that makes visiting so easy. Feet on the coffee table, raid the fridge, read her books and dissect our lives in detail. That’s comfort.

The wedding was wonderful. Bride and Groom are 30 years old. In love for 6 years. Already a couple with a dog and habits and already family issues nudging at them. But watching them take their vows you could feel it. They have a bond and tenacity. A year of planning a wedding, going to school, working, changing jobs, deaths in both families and health issues of their own. They have built something that the wedding confirmed rather than created.

Many of the guests were older. Relatives of course, but older friends too. At our table everyone had been married, divorced, partnered and unpartnered. Yet no cynicism, no jadedness. I could feel the room pulling for the newlyweds as they were announced as “Mr. and Mrs.” at the reception. Be the couple that makes it, be the couple that never loses the love, be the couple that proves it can be done. Be that for you and for us.

John and I danced for hours. He said, “I don’t dance” and got up every time. He’s an athlete and musician so of course he’s a good dancer. And to seal the deal there was great music and we were all basking in the love of our young couple.

But I had this twinge the next day and even today. I felt some envy or maybe regret, the passage of time for sure. I know I wanted some of what the bride and groom have: The sense of being at the beginning of their relationship, the start of their lives, the opening act of whatever their story will be. I don’t know what act I’m in—third? Is there a fourth?

Today walking at the gym I had to stop and remind myself: Illness and death will come without my help. I don’t need to rehearse that part of the story. Don’t go looking for it. Instead at times like this notice the good, the love and the delights like this wedding.

Wedding

This weekend we fly to Baltimore for the wedding of a young friend. S. was 16 when I met her. I was a staff member at the high school where she was a dancer. Somehow we stayed in touch over many years and many miles. She went to Houston, DC, New York and abroad. I moved from Baltimore to New York and we both went thru many changes. But a connection remained. Now she is 28 and getting married and to a wonderful man who is kind and smart and steady on his feet and in his heart.

We fly tomorrow morning. We’ll stay with old friends. We will be family for S. at the rehearsal dinner and on Saturday we’ll witness the wedding vows and dance like crazy at the reception.

Many kinds of joy in this weekend. Flying—which I always love, and visiting old friends, seeing a young couple take this amazing step toward commitment, introducing John to parts of my past, having play time in Baltimore including seeing the Edgar Allen Poe exhibit at the Museum of Art, and on Saturday night dancing with him. That is the sweetest part. We’ll get to dance together.

How Are You?

Last night we went to the wedding. We appear as a couple in public. We meet people we knew and people new to us. I talk to Bob seated on my right and meet his wife, Christine. He is 80 and she is 60. In making small talk about families and grown children he says, “Well, my children don’t come around much. Christine and I met while I was still married. I fell in love with her and left my wife. I wanted to be happy.” It was more than 20 years ago. We talk about their life and businesses and travels. They are quite happy. I tell him that John and I are in a similar situation. He asks, “Do people try to make you feel bad?” I say, “yes, sometimes.” and Bob says, “Well, fuck them.”

During the evening John and I talk with other guests.
When people say to John, “How are you?” There is a moment of calculation.
Do they know about the cancer or not?
Are they saying, “How are you—given that you have cancer?”
Or
Is it simply, “How are you?” and now he has to tell them about the cancer.

Going to a Wedding

Next weekend we are going to a wedding. My friend’s son is getting married and we have been invited. It feels special. The invitation came to us as a couple. That is special. We’ll be attending this grown up and very social affair together. That is special. It turns out that we’ll each know some of the other guests; our worlds intersect at this wedding. That is special.

We talk about someday getting married. I imagine a ceremony on the beach. I have seen a dress that would be splendid for a beach wedding. A peachy ivory lace sheath, knee length that just skims the body. When I saw it in the store I thought, “I could get married in that.” More than once I have thought, “Just buy the dress. Buy the dress so you have it, so you can look at it in the closet and know the day will come.”

But I have also thought, “If he dies that dress will kill me and it will be excruciating to have a wedding dress that was never worn.”

Live in today? Hope for the future? Believe him when he says, “We’ll be married for 20 years.”? Or just be grateful that this week we are a normal couple buying a wedding gift and looking forward to going to a wedding?