Rattling a Few Bones~A Personal History~Part II

The beginning of this story can be found here.

So we moved in together. This wasn't something my family was going to pop a gasket over; my sister had already paved that road for me (and thanks, btw!), but that guy with the nice butt? Yeah, his parents were a different story. It was actually a touch and go moment when I found out his parents were not only Baptist, but Elders in a really fundie-type church. I had to know what he thought about that kind of religion and whether it was something he felt strongly about. If you have read any of my posts on being pagan, then you will know that this was a potential deal-breaker for me. He assured me that he was more of the scientific bent and since Evolution is a dirty word in his parent's house, he was ready to go wherever I led him. It was tempting, for a minute, to mess with his head and tell him that "candle wax on the nipples, and witchcraft" were de rigeur for me, but only for a minute. The honeymoon period isn't the best time to fuck with a guy's head - later on, after you're married and know all their dirty little secrets is a more prudent time, unless you're TRYING to get rid of the guy! (Or in the case of Bea's poorly chosen male roommate, a little Violent Femmes does the trick nicely, but that's her story to tell!) So we settled in and commenced to living in sin, which pretty much feels the same as living outside of sin, only you get to have sex more often.

Against the advice of my future father-in-law, we told my future MIL we were moving in together. I wasn't sure how she would take it, but I was damned if we were going to live together secretly - who gets to answer the phone when it rings? She wasn't real happy about it, but what was she going to do? I think she at least respected the fact that we didn't try to lie to her, and that, as we told her, this was a definitive step towards getting married down the road.

We got married almost exactly four years after we started dating, and had a groovy pagan wedding outside with my old roommate and his friend playing the pipes and drum as our music. I hear it was a beautiful wedding. I was so frazzled and tired I don't remember much about it, other than my mother being ten minutes late, and her telling me that because she didn't like my mother-in-law, she was washing her hands of doing anything else. That would be my mom - always a pain in the ass in a crisis.

The candid shot

The staged shot

The groomsmen. Can you guess which are my brothers and which are my BILs?

There are epic sagas about my mother for each of my siblings' weddings, far too lengthy and complicated to relate here. Suffice to say that the wedding cake (made by my mother, each time) played a pivotal part in the melodramas that went down at my brothers' weddings, and my sister's wedding went the smoothest of all of them, because Mom took a codeine by accident (she's always putting prescriptions in aspirin bottles) and passed out. I by-passed the possible wedding cake issues by using a chocolate chip-based frosting on my cake, (it would take a blow torch to move that stuff!) but there was no by-passing possible in dealing with the 5 year old that is my mother.

A telling picture

Cutting the cake (and a damn fine cake it was! None of that anemic white cake - it was 5 tiers of 9 layers each tier, chocolate cake and coffee ganache.)

I considered telling you more of the gorey details, but even after 16 years, it still pisses me off, and I might never finish where I'm going with this story if I start recollecting that particular chapter. You're just going to have to either wait for the book or try to divine the story from the wedding pictures. Or ask Bea - she and Miss Q were there to peel me off the walls.

Garter removal (oo, la la!)

Put a fork in it - I'm done!

After the hitching commenced we settled down in Raleigh and spent a couple of relatively peaceful years before we were seized with that mid-life insanity: the desire for offspring.

To be continued.