Somebody’s Getting Married, by Martha Thomases – Brilliant Disguise | @MDWorld

February 20, 2017 Victor El-Khouri 5 Comments

My son got married late Saturday afternoon. I’m writing this beforehand. Depending on what Trump does, I’ll tell you about the wedding next week. He and his bride have been planning this for more than a year, and the big day is finally here.

My own wedding was a rushed affair. Not because I was pregnant (that would be another four years), but because my mother was dying. A friend made my dress in three days. In my wedding photos, everyone looks like they are about to start sobbing.

To the best of my knowledge, everyone invited on Saturday is in good health, at least for the moment. That is, unless you consider my intense anxiety about packing for a trip to be an illness.

My wedding was rushed, and designed to make my mother happy. She had been anticipating my wedding since at least my freshman year of high school. She wanted to go with me when we selected things for my registry (and she also wanted to pick out all of those things herself). She wanted a Jewish wedding in a synagogue, which spooked my gentile in-laws a bit. In the wedding photos, my husband’s grandmother looks as if she sees snakes.

Still, there were elements of the ceremony that felt personal to me. The rabbi who performed the service had been our neighbor for ten years. As a kid, I would sometimes go into his house and crawl under the sink when we played hide-and-seek. He knew me better than to include the word “obey” in our vows. He also left out the part about forsaking all others.

Before she died, my mother told my father that if he voted for Ronald Reagan, she would come back and haunt him. I can’t imagine what she would think about what’s happening today. For that matter, I can’t imagine what my father would say, either.

To get married at this time is an act of hope and optimism. It proclaims a belief in love and pleasure and the comfort of conversation. It charts the course for a new kind of family, because every family is different. It welcomes people from every facet of the couple’s lives.

This is not to say that conservatives can’t get married, or have ceremonies meaningful to them. I know they do, and I’m happy for them. Still, it can be difficult for me to relate.

When I met my husband, I had already slept with lots of other people (it was the 1970s). Still, with him, I felt like we were part of something new, something miraculous. I felt like it was him and me against the world. Getting married and having a child was at once entirely mundane and an act of revolution. That’s what I found meaningful about the experience. I could be wrong, but it is not my sense that conservatives have these same feelings.

I assume my son and his bride feel some of these things, plus a whole lot of emotions that are unique to them. That’s the fun part.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to kick off my shoes and dance.