Last week my husband and I celebrated a milestone; we have now been married for 21 years. To commemorate the occasion, we went out to an early dinner, bought a set of towels for our bathroom (and retired the old ones to the garage) and looked at our wedding album.
The looking-at-the-wedding-album tradition is one of my very favorites. We do it as a family, and we go through each page and talk about all the wonderful things about that day. We remember people no longer with us—all of our grandmothers, both my mother and stepmother, my sister, a friend—and remark on the passing of time. We point to small children who now have children of their own, and we recall details that made our wedding such a perfect celebration of our love.
We planned the entire thing, and paid for nine-tenths of it ourselves. It was at the Villa Chanticleer in Healdsburg, and we decorated the ceremony area with fichus plants strung with fairy lights, and a garden arch draped in tulle.
In the entry way we had a framed scrapbooked poster displayed, with the story of how we met—his personal ad, my letter and photo to him (All American Guy), his letter and photo back to me (Girl Next Door). In the dining room, tablecloths in French blue and white were the setting for little potted ivy plants, which went home with all the people who helped us put together the day.
At the far end, the cake stood in all its glory: a four-tiered lemon cake with cream cheese frosting, with little pearls and flowers cascading down the side and surrounding it.
We each had three attendants, and we had my seven nieces and nephews go down as a herd instead of choosing just one to be a flower girl or ring bearer. Matt’s parents walked him down the aisle. Matt’s fifteen-year-old sister Andrea sang a solo, “Grow Old Along With Me,” by John Lennon.
The father-daughter dance was to the Beatles’ “Here Comes the Sun,” and Matt and I danced to our song, “Never Tear Us Apart,” by INXS. The song Matt picked for the garter toss was “Misirlou,” which was famous from the movie “Pulp Fiction.”
Some of these things were captured by photos, of course, but a still picture of my dad and I doing the twist can’t really convey the joy of the moment, so we let the stories unfold, and we let the memories spill over us, and we smile at it all.
This year, we gathered the teenage children (“No, you have to put down the phone. And no, you can’t bring the iPad”) and settled on the couch, photo album in hand. We were several pages in when Megan stood up and took a picture, saying, “Aww!”
I looked down at myself, fully pajama-ed and not at all ready for a photograph, and blurted out, “Hey, you can’t send that to anyone.”
She laughed. “Don’t worry. I didn’t send it to anyone. I posted it on Snapchat.”
This is a child that I carried for nine months under my heart. I had pre-term labor and was on bed rest for over a month to give her the best possible start in life. She then was three days late, but I’m over that.
This is a child I have loved and nurtured and cherished for over 19 years. I was a Girl Scout leader for her. I have battled on her behalf, attended numerous back to school nights for her and I have held her hand in the emergency room. I even went on the California Screamin’ roller coaster for this precious, precious child.
And then: “Aww” and Snapchat.
Maybe in 21 years this picture will make it into the album tradition. We’ll recall how we were lovingly reminiscing and how our firstborn wanted to share our joy with the entire internet. We’ll laugh and laugh and laugh. Sure. It could happen.
Resigned to the futility of calling it back I made her send me the picture and because I’m me, I sent it to my best friend. And because she is my best friend, her reply was, “Cute jammies!”
Juliana LeRoy wears many hats, including wife, mother, paraeducator and writer. She can be spotted around Windsor gathering material, or reached at ml****@so***.net.
