AN AUTHENTIC WEDDING

By C J Petterson

“Mark called,” my mother said without looking up from her crossword puzzle the moment I walked into the house.

“Oh?” A rush of love coursed through me. I couldn’t keep from smiling.  My first born.

“He’s getting married.”

Panic obliterated the rush of love. The urge to wail rose in my throat.

I gulped and croaked, “When?”

“They haven’t set a date.”

“No. I meant when did he call?”

“About an hour ago.”

“Oh.” That certainly didn’t give me time to intercede. I was in Detroit, Michigan, Mark was in Mobile, Alabama, and I could be reasonably sure his relationship with his future bride was longer than an hour old.

“What’s her name?”

“He didn’t say.”

I looked at her in utter exasperation. Swedes can be so cryptic. “I hope she’s not some barefoot cutie he found in a field picking cotton,” I muttered punching in my son’s phone number.

She lifted her brilliantly white coif and smiled. “I have a picture of you doing that very thing.”

“Mom! That picture was taken in Texas more than four decades ago. I was three-years old.”

“And your point is?”

“Hi,” I said when I heard the lilt of Mark’s baritone reverberate in my ear. “Grandma said you called.” My voice trailed into thin air because I was still choking on the “m” word.

“Mom, are you sitting down?”

The word “No!” strobed like a neon sign in the back of my head.

My legs couldn’t hold me, and I collapsed into a kitchen chair. “I am, now.” I leaned my forehead in my hand. It’s true, I thought. My baby’s getting married. “Grandma says you might have some wonderful news.”

“No might about it, I’m getting married.”

“How wonderful! Congratulations! You sound so happy, Sugar,” I said. “Do I know your fiancé?”

“Of course. You met her when I played for the Milwaukee Brewers in Beloit last year. Cheryl. You remember. Dark hair, dark eyes, great legs.”

“Cheryl. Spectacular cheekbones, gorgeous, part Cherokee. Yes, I remember. A beautiful girl.” I began to blather. “A Mobile girl. From Mobile, Alabama.” Going, going, gone.

I let out a guilty sigh. It was my fault he was in Mobile. I’d left my baby on the steps of the University of South Alabama on the eve of one of some impending storm then driven back to Michigan. Then, while my son wasn’t looking, his father and I went our separate ways. Mobile became Mark’s new home. 

“You and Grandma are going to come, aren’t you?  October 6th.”

“But today’s . . .” I looked at the calendar stuck under a magnet on the side of the refrigerator, “already the end of August.”

“Yep. We’ve got it all figured out. It’ll be small, just a few friends and family.”

“That sounds . . . perfect. I’ve never met Cheryl’s family, Mark. Will we get along? How about a hall? The church? A minister? You are getting married in church, aren’t you?”

“All taken care of. Cheryl’s mom and sister will do the cooking, and a friend of hers wants to make the cake. One of her cousins will marry us. He’ll have his minister’s license by then. Some friends of ours will let us use their house for the wedding, and we can have the reception in their backyard.”

“Are you going to have music?”

“Music? Hadn’t thought about it.”

I almost joined in his infectious giggle.

“Maybe we’ll have everybody hum the wedding march.”

“Mark!” I sputtered because I knew he was only half kidding. “Why don’t you ask your brother to sing?”

I had always dreamed that Jeff would raise his wonderful bass voice and sing at his older brother’s wedding. Jeff was also a fine guitar player. Granted, he usually played bass guitar, but there’d be time enough to practice.

“Don’t worry. We’ll figure it out. Put it on your calendar. October 6. Gotta go, got a game. Love ya.” 

“Love you, too,” I crooned to the dial tone.

For a fleeting moment, I was happy. Then I remembered. Isn’t this what sons do? Find their life mate and leave their mothers forever? I’d need to chew on this a while longer before I could swallow it. 

It occurred to me that The Ex would bring his wife. I wasn’t even dating. Mark’s seventy-eight-year-old grandmother would be my traveling companion for the weekend trip to the Gulf Coast. A plan formed. We’d all be together for the first time since before the divorce. Wonderful! Well, except for The Ex and Wife bit.

Being the mother of the groom, I escaped the seismic planning. Typical of a son, Mark filled me in on details only when I grilled him. Yes, the wedding would be held at the home of friends . . . the McKinleys. Music was all set. The three McKinley daughters, all aged nine and under, had asked if they could sing something special for the processional. The reception would serve a lot of fabulous seafood, courtesy of Mark’s new father-in-law who oystered, shrimped, and crabbed in Mobile Bay. I didn’t tell Mark I’m allergic to seafood.

Two days before the wedding, Mark called Jeff. I’m told the conversation went something like this:

Mark: “Coming to the wedding?”

Jeff: “What wedding?”

Mark: “Cheryl and I are getting married October 6.”

Jeff: “Fine time to tell me. I’m in class at Tallahassee, and I don’t have a car.”

Jeff hopped on a Greyhound Bus the next day.

When I arrived in Mobile, a wealth of Southern hugs cracked my brittle Northern exterior. I discovered I was gaining a wonderful daughter-in-law and a warm, welcoming extended family. I also discovered Mobile’s hellaciously humid weather.

I hadn’t lived in Texas since I was seven, so being familiar as I was with Michigan’s Octobers I thought the temperature would be autumnally cool or at least only moderately warm. On the day of the wedding, the weather was hot and humid. Near the ninety-degree mark. My mother-of-the-groom dress was a lovely burgundy silk--a long-sleeved, full-skirted tea-length dress. I glowed--Southern-speak for perspired--the entire day. Mark’s Texas born and bred grandmother, bless her heart, took it all in stride.

Another of my son’s friends acted as videographer for posterity. Mark’s grandmother and I each took our turn as he curved his arm around our shoulders, leaned close, and introduced us to the camera lens. “This is my (fill in the appropriate name) in whom I am well pleased.” I can attest that mothers become puddles when their kids say things like that.

When Cheryl’s cousin, who had just gotten his Assembly of God ministerial license, arrived--a paraplegic in a wheelchair--he was immediately surrounded by helpful hands. Mark took off his tuxedo jacket and joined the team that maneuvered the wheelchair up the fourteen porch steps of the Creole-style home then through the front door and into the living room. Afterwards, these gentlemen more than glowed. They happily wiped down with towels, sipped large glasses of iced tea or coke (as all soft drinks in the South seemed to be called), and stood near the air conditioning vents.

The ceremony began. We sat on couches, overstuffed chairs, footstools, and kitchen chairs, arranged in a semi-circle facing the fireplace and the minister in his wheelchair.

The Ex and Wife didn’t show up. Relieved for myself and crushed for Mark, I mentally threatened murder. But their absence didn’t dampen his exuberance. He was totally in awe of the adventure he was about to embark on.

Cheryl and her father appeared at the top of the stairs. His brown face was stoic, and she was beautiful, of course, in a white dress with slightly full skirt. The stairway was too narrow for them to walk side-by-side so he sidled down a step in front of her.

The young McKinley sisters, who had been practicing their song for weeks, suffered acute stage fright. They looked directly into the video camera and whispered, “We’re not singing.” Their father, Jimmy, came to the rescue--sort of. He put his lips together and blew a mock trumpet version of the wedding march. I smothered a giggle as the small honored group of family and friends fulfilled Mark’s prophesy and began to hum the tune.

Understandably nervous at conducting his first wedding, the minister stumbled over the words a few times during the service. After the ceremony, Mark whispered in Cheryl’s ear, “I don’t think we’re really married. He kept saying Holy macrimony the whole time.”  

Jeff, looking a lot like a Don Johnson Miami Vice clone, shook his head. Sitting on a footstool, his face beaming with brotherly love, he said, “Now this is what I call an authentic wedding.”

The reception was a garden party that had more mosquitoes than people. With shiny faces and brilliant smiles, Mark and Cheryl wandered happily among their guests. The food tables sagged under dish after dish of shrimp, crab, and oysters prepared in more ways than I knew existed. I filled a plate with carrot sticks, greeted and glowed, and smacked at mosquitoes.

When I retreated into the house, I found my mother, her hazel eyes aglow, contentedly munching her way through a large mound of fried oysters. She had already made close personal friends of several new relatives, one of whom, no doubt, had provided the oysters.

Mark and Cheryl had pulled it off. Life was good. No, it was better. They had merged their two families on the strength of their love.

Two days later the newlyweds left for a honeymoon in Australia where Mark had signed to play baseball . . . but that’s a whole ‘nother story.

THE END