I would have scanned a photo for you, but my mother doesn’t let that wedding album leave the house. I’m hoping someday she’ll let me have it as I’d like to keep it for my child.
When I was a kid I would stare at the pages of my parents’ wedding album imagining how I would look on my wedding day. My mother looked so beautiful and happy. Her dress was a beautiful satin empire waist with a bow, and she wore long white gloves. The bridesmaids wore chartreuse satin empire waist sheaths trimmed with yellow satin ribbon. My dad wore a suit with a yellow tie and he looked really young with his big ears sticking out. They did the arm wraparound thing with the first toast and wedding cake. The cake was tiered and there are clippings of their engagement and wedding announcements and a copy of the invitation and thank you cards.
My parents got married during the Christmas break of my mom’s freshman year in college (my dad had graduated from college the previous spring) because my father had been drafted for the Vietnam war. Fortunately for me, he reported for duty a few weeks later and discovered he was partially deaf in one ear. So he was 4F’d out and never served a day. That meant he could go home and make a life with my mom and, a few months later, make me.
It’s a shame it didn’t work out, and I suspect if my father had not been drafted they would have dated longer and eventually fizzled out as they were not suited for each other at all. As it is they struggled and fought for the next 13 years before separating for 10 years and finally divorcing after 23 years of marriage.
But today, I don’t want to think about that. I want to think about the young couple I stared at in that photo album all those years ago, who looked at each other like no one else existed.
Chorus