The Fourth Time's a Charm?
last updated on Tuesday, April 26, 2005 at 6:44:56 PM CST

regarding events somewhere about 11 April, 1993

It was sometime around August or September of 2002 that my mother approached me with an interesting question.  "Would you give me away to David at our wedding in April?"

I thought about it for a brief moment, and answered, "On one condition.  I never have to take you back."

"Deal."

Shortly afterward, she started talking openly about the wedding plans.  She was going to sew her dress.  And the bridesmaids' dresses.  I was almost certain she was going to tell us that she was going to do the tuxes for the guys too, but she stopped short of Complete Lunacy, and instead, exited the little yellow bus at Total Insanity.  Of course, on the Giant Map of Dumb Decisions, Total Insanity is a suburb of Complete Lunacy, so it was really hard to see the difference.

There's another point that I forgot to mention.  We all know my mother.

There wasn't a chance in hell that she was going to manage to finish this endeavor, and she had eight months to do it.  We all looked at her like she'd just looked at us and told us she was Jesus Christ, reborn, and walking across Lake Michigan.  It was really that same sort of expression.

My friend Terri, who had been asked to be one of her bridesmaids, asked me if she'd lost her mind.  We all sort of politely told my mother that she'd lost the last of her marbles, misplaced the last sandwich for her pic-nic, and, indeed, was a few cards short of a full deck.  She just smiled with that vacant, "I haven't a clue what I'm doing but I'm obstinate, and going to tell you I can do it anyway" look on her face, and told us that she would, by God, have them done, and by damn, they'd be perfect.

That's what it would have taken too.  God.  And at least a minor miracle.

Unfortunately for her, being the daughter of an Episcopalean minister had no such pull, and so the busy signal on the Batphone to Heaven continued to blare loudly into her ears.  She must have mistaken it for music, because she plodded along on the course to Disaster (which, as we all know, is just a few miles from Complete Lunacy).

I think she finally bought the material four months before the wedding.  We'd been reminding her that she was running out of time for months.  Of course, she didn't listen to us.  I'm fairly sure she didn't start actually making the dresses until middle or late February.

Long story short, the comment that she'd still be sewing her wedding dress on the day of her wedding... came true.

Yes, that's right.  My mother was still trying to finish her wedding dress on the day of the wedding.  It was one of those nice strapless dresses.  Now, many people might think strapless dresses simply defy gravity and somehow cling to a woman's body by sheer willpower alone (work with me here, and pretend that dresses have willpower for just a moment).  Of course, the reality of the situation is that strapless dresses tend to have stuff sewn into them so that they keep their shape.  They also tend to be form fitting.  Form fitting dresses can be a bad thing if you don't have a form that should be in form fitting material (ie: there's a reason I don't go running around in spandex).

Now, the other reality of the situation is that my mother's dress was lacking in the form-fitting, shape-holding department, and was definitely relying in sheer willpower to remain on her body.  And like a cartoon character trying to walk in the middle of the air, the Book of Gravity lesson quickly took over.  It might have been funny if this was discovered at home, and we could have run and bought her some white dress, and made the wedding slightly less of a disaster rollercoaster.

No.  We learned it at the church as she began to become unglued, and Terri started searching the church for tape so that it could be fastened to her shoulders.  Personally, I recommended staples, but those were quickly frowned upon.  I'm not exactly certain why.

Before I go any further, I need to flash back to the events of the morning of the funer... err... wedding.  You see, Terri and I had to run food over to the reception hall.  They'd rented out this nice, large hall in Hinsdale, and we had to go deliver some of the snack food.  Basically, we were taking up slack to fix things that, well, really should have already been planned for, but, by now, I'm sure you're understanding that the idea of the word plan really hadn't occurred to my mother.

So we're driving along, and Terri and I are just discussing the mass hysteria that the wedding day was swiftly becoming.  It was so crazy that it had to be funny, because if it wasn't funny, we'd be getting quite annoyed.  There'd already been a mistake with the cumberbunds and ties for the guys... my mother chose a rainbow theme for her wedding.  Each bridesmaid and groomsman had a different color of the rainbow (in a pastel color), and then her and David (her fiance) had white.  Me, giving her away, I got black.  Well, except that when I picked up my tux, I had green.  David had blue.  Yeah... everyone had the wrong color.  Thankfully, my mother remembered which person had which dress.  Would have been nice if she'd have remembered to actually sew them to last more than five minutes.

Anyway, as we're driving along, we decided that the culmination of the Perfect™ day would be if someone actually stood up and said something when the priest opened up the, "Speak now or forever hold your peace," portion of the wedding.

Okay, so we drop everything off at the reception hall... we quickly decide we'll run over there immediately after the wedding to get it all decorated since there's a couple of hours between wedding and reception, and mother had planned so well that she hadn't actually accounted for anyone decorating the place.  Then Terri and I race (and I do mean race) back to the church to continue with the antics there.

After everyone's cumberbund is in place, my mom's dress is taped to her shoulders, and the bridesmaids' dresses are pinned up because the hems are already falling out, we get to start the wedding.  I haven't mentioned until now that my mother was planning on the entire congregation of the church showing up, and tons of her friends, and just so many people that it wasn't even funny.  Oh... she was sort of counting on her photographer to show up too.  That happened about five minutes before the wedding.  As for the congregation... well, she had about twenty people show up.  Most were friends.  Of course, one might actually need to rely on something other than the church bulletin and word of mouth to relay that there was a wedding, but then, most normal people aren't sewing their strapless wedding dress on the day of the occasion, so, I digress a bit.

The wedding begins.  Two by two, the colors of the rainbow happily march down the aisle.  Thankfully it was pretty easy stuff, because there hadn't actually been what is typically known as a rehearsal.  Everything was decided the day of the wedding.  So then it's my turn to walk my mother down the aisle.  I walk her down there, she stand next to David, and I suddenly realize I have no bloody clue where I'm supposed to be, what I'm supposed to be doing, or anything.  So I just stand there behind the two of them as the service starts, waiting and praying for a clue as to what I was supposed to do.

Well, the service is going, and there it is.  "Speak now or forever hold your peace."  I look over at Terri, who, like all the bridesmaids and groomsmen, is standing, facing my mother and her husband-to-be, and I see the look of hilarity cross her face.  There I am, standing behind my mom and David, biting my tongue, some strange smirk on my face, trying to keep from laughing.  It almost didn't work.  I almost burst out in inexplicable laughter, inexplicable only because I'd never tell them why.  Of course, if I had done that, it would have been the end for Terri too.  She was holding on to that precious string of propriety as much as I was.

Thankfully, no one spoke up.

Then I hear the words, "Who gives this woman to be wed."

I wasn't quite sure what else to say, you know, not having been previously instructed on any of my duties, so I simply said, "I do."  And thought to myself afterward that I might have chosen the wrong phrase.  Shortly thereafter, we were allowed to be seated, and so I took a seat next to my grandmother, and was able to breath a little.

The remainder of the service went well, and my mom quickly became Margaret Haywood, the fourth of her husbands now firmly entrenched into history.  There was some brief calamity over getting some photographs taken, because apparently the photographer had disappeared, but I guess he showed back up.

Terri and I ran and decorated the wedding hall, and the reception began shortly thereafter.  Now, David had two kids of his own, and another three "step children" from his second wife (my mother's his third wife), and all five of them were there.  Then there was me and my half-sister Veronica (from my mom's second marriage).  And my friend Terri.  A few other people.  And a reception hall that was way too big for the people who attended.

There was dancing and drinking and merriment anyway.  I think my mom regained a little bit of her sanity (of course, that's entirely up for debate).  And I was out having fun with Terri and we were dancing and having a good time.  Most of David's kids were looking at me like I was out of my mind.  I kept thinking to myself, "Whatever."

So far, so good though.  My mom hadn't had a marriage last more than seven years.  It's April 2005, and they're still together.  Twelve years later.  Maybe she finally has settled down.

Come to think of it, maybe God really was working miracles.  Just not ones involving wedding dresses.