Wedding Anniversary #32

  On this day in 1988, I'd be getting ready to be married in the same church where my parents were married in 1962, the same church where my grandfather was pastor for many years before he died.  Here's one of my favorite pictures of that early morning:

Yes, that's my grandmother ironing my wedding dress so that I'd be suitable.  The dress was not wrinkled; I have no idea why my grandmother decided she needed to iron the dress.  She was the kind of woman who believed in ironing.  I am not.  But I can still appreciate the efforts that people make for me to make me more presentable.

I appreciate them more now, 32 years later.  Then, I'd have wanted to spare my grandmother the hassle of ironing a dress that was just going to be rumpled anyway. This morning, I'm amazed at the fact that anyone on this planet is willing to iron a wedding dress. My grandmother had ways of showing love that I didn't appreciate at the time.

We got married at 11 a.m.  We had friends and family members with a long drive home, so we wanted them to be able to get an early-ish start.  We had a short honeymoon in Asheville, N.C.  That first night, we went out to eat.  We shared a slice of cheesecake with blueberry topping, and we each got our own cup of coffee.  That felt like an extravagence, not sharing a cup of coffee.  Then we got back home in time for our grad school classes.

For the most part, we've been happy together. He was a Philosophy major, and I was an English major: temperamentally we're suited. We come at social justice issues from a similar direction. We're artistically suited.   I know how lucky we've been.

I look back on that day when we got married and shake my head. I was convinced I was so grown up; I had just turned 23. But really, what do any of us know when we enter into such a union? We think we know all that we need to know, but we will learn so much more.