Anyone who knows me well knows that I have NO memory. I seriously will forget what I ate at breakfast before it's dinnertime. I have very little memories of high school, even fewer of middle school and virtually nothing left from childhood. Why? I am not sure. I swear that I lost a good 25 percent of recall power with the placenta of each baby and another 25 having fun in the late 80s early 90s! Unfortunately, as my kids grow up, it upsets me to think of what wonderful things I have forgotten already. I have numerous hours of film footage of A when she was a sweet baby. I (to the annoyance of my family) am now an obsessive picture taker. This mainly due to a new love of photography but is in part due to my fear of forgetting! Hence this blog came about. I hope that by recording some of it here and there that I will have memories for a lifetime.
Back up 18 years. (WOW.. I'm not that old! really?) Critter and I met at a club and from that point on, would have "dates" every few months. We would usually go to a pool hall. On rare occasions we would have a good night kiss. But for one reason or another it would never progress beyond that. One of the two of us usually had a girl/boy friend. He was really awful at the flirting thing! That or I was pretty dense or used to a much more forward guy. I tended to go for the bad boy. And (much to his dismay) he was a good guy in my eyes! He was the only one to actually pick me up and take me on dates. He opened doors for me. He picked up the tab. All this completely 100% foreign to me!! Still, we remained friends for 6 years. Then something changed.
Critter will protest this and call me a liar I'm sure until I the day I die but there was a magical moment for me. One of our all too familiar pool hall dates one night in June of 1995. He drove me home. normal. He opened my car door for me. normal. He walked me up to my apartment. normal. He kissed me goodnight. NOT so normal! As he walked away, I remember clearly to this day watching him walk away through the peep hole, hands pressed against the door... not wanting him to go away for another 3 months. Something clicked. And with only slight initiation on my part, together we stayed for the next 12 years! After only a year we moved in together along with two other guys. After 5 years I found out that I, even though on the pill, was pregnant.
Much like he was in denial about me essentially seeing fireworks 6 years previous, enter me being unsure about his story. Critter, the wonderful person that he is, of course proposed to me. I however am under the assumption that this is only happening because I had a 'bun in the oven'. Our roommates and my sister all swore that he was previously planning on asking me and had chickened out once already. Never-the-less, he did it. It is certainly nothing I will forget as it was far from ordinary.
Critter took me out to dinner at a wonderful steak restaurant one evening. Me being a little ticked that he hadn't asked me to marry him yet, and concerned that I was not going to have any insurance for this pregnancy (having been laid off the week prior to the pregnancy test... another story for another time) I was not thinking that he was setting the stage so to speak. It's not like we went out to dinner at places like this on a regular basis. Certainly not places where we had to get dressed up. (Maybe the aforementioned statement of me being dense would be better suited here.) So we are finishing our appetizers and awaiting our steaks when I get a phone call. My grandmother died. I was not really that close to her but was still considerably upset and shocked. We ordered our food to go and head home. I'm not sure why we went home (that pesky ol' lack of memory thing again) but as we were about to leave to go to the hospital where my family was, Critter pulled out the ring. He never really asked and I never really said anything. I just put on the ring, threw my arms around his neck and began crying. See what I mean about not the usual proposal?
Being newly laid off, mom having just had a knee surgery and off of work a few months and me "with child", mom and I threw ourselves into wedding planning. Of course I needed to have the wedding take place before I started to show right? This allowed us about two months. We hired a wonderful wedding planner and booked the inner courtyard for the wedding.
Wedding day I was fine. Woke up fine and functioned throughout the day fine. It rained. That was a sign of good luck right? Everything seemed smooth. People commented to me right and left that I was unusually calm and at ease. I kept saying... 'what's this? we've been together for 6 years. this is merely a piece of paper. the bigger things (child) are yet to come!' Great! I was a rock. We all went to breakfast. We all went to get our hair done. We all went to the hotel and got ready. We all went down and took pre-wedding photos. We all got in line. Cool as a cuke. Then after everyone headed down the aisle to my most favorite Pachelbel Canon in D, the music changed.... I FROZE. Dad said I dug my nails into his hand and was overcome by a blank stare. I walked down the aisle with him. I heard nothing. Literally! Well.. I heard the birds, but no music and not one word that was said to me by anyone. I arrived down front and saw Critter mouth the word 'Breathe' to me. I couldn't. I saw the minister talking, but heard nothing. Nothing but the birds. I watched her finger follow the script in her hand so that I knew when it was my turn to say something. I kept turning around looking at the position of my sister and my SIL. I needed to know where they were in relation to the brick walled garden behind them since I just KNEW I would need to rush past them at any moment and vomit over the side! Luckily I did not. THANK GOD! Can you imagine? And as if from a movie, after she pronounced us husband and wife, I heard the fast forward to present of surrounding noises and was again, fine.
1 comment:
What a beautiful story Mollie!!! I'm so glad you decided to blog it....this will surely be one that you and your children read over and over again. It's amazing how well the words flowed together for you, just perfect!
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