We all chuckled, except for my soon-to-be step-son who, at ten years old, was giggling uncontrollably at the idea of a grown man making a fart joke. Nevertheless, it seemed a few of us took advantage of the good teacher’s advice as the six of us passed through the separating doors along with an assortment of offensive odors.
As the wedding ceremony began, I not surprisingly became distracted. But it wasn't the usual random links on a webpage, puzzle pages of the newspaper or random shiny objects that distracted me--it was, oddly enough, reflecting on the experiences that led to that moment that drew my focus away from the ceremony.
The face of one friend reminded me of a a wedding from the summer before. The idea of an all cash bar at the reception had initially been pretty offensive to my roommate and me and our dates, but it wasn't long before we were double-fisting long islands and shooting buttery nipples with the groom's grandmother. From there, it was the shortest of trips to a basketful of toilet paper and then the newlyweds' freshly shoe-polished car. Aside from the fact that the t.p. tosses over the roof of the car between another drunken buddy and me were ridiculously off-target and resulted in the most piss-poor attempt at a t.p.-ing that I'd ever participated in or born witness to, we had lingered so long at the bar that the bride and groom were about two minutes on our heels and growing increasingly impatient that our lame prankster efforts were delaying their departure.
But the evening hardly ended there. My roommate and I had the good sense to turn the keys of the car over to our sober girlfriends for the drive home. Unfortunately, however, we did not have the good sense to not convince them to stop at the nearest liquor store for a couple bottles of Brut. Neither, as it turns out, did we have the good sense to not uncork one of those battles after an unnecessary but spirited discussion among the four of us about the state’s open container laws as they applied to the backseat of our moving car. The advice emanating from our more logical girlfriends in the front seats of the vehicle was quickly rendered moot as the two of us were able to muster enough dexterity to finally uncoil the wire and pop the cork atop the bottle of excessively cheap—and warm—bubbly.
I chuckled to myself--or out loud, maybe--and tried to retrain my focus on the penultimate bridesmaid strolling down the aisle. But just over her right shoulder, I espied another face, this of a soon-to-be in-law brought to mind the earliest controversy our wedding plans created. It was my first ever Jewish holiday dinner and, consequently, my first exposure to kugel, beef brisket (that wasn't barbecued, anyway) and gin and tonics (although that may have been more of a family thing than a Jewish thing). And, as it turned out, it was my first exposure to religious strife.
The Jewish/Gentile thing had obviously not been insurmountable for the two of us. Hannah, the woman who would be my bride in a few short moments, had come of age in a not-so-observant Jewish family though she had gone through a bat mitzvah and confirmation. I, on the other hand, had grown up in an evangelical Christian church and attended a nondenominational Christian college. But as different as our backgrounds may have been initially, the years we had spent sorting out our faith and beliefs on our own were remarkably headed down similar paths. Hannah had been attending a church that she really enjoyed for a couple years with a friend, and I had pretty well cast aside the dogma and doctrine that I felt did little more than smother a meaningful relationship with God.
However, although Hannah's family had not been particularly observant in their Judaism, my presence as a Gentile in their midst stirred up some not so mild concerns about how that would play out in our wedding ceremony. One relative was concerned that a pastor might be involved in officiating our ceremony. Another couldn't fathom why we would have the ceremony on Shabbat, not that anyone observed it anyway. And another was convinced Hannah's deceased grandfather would be disappointed in the decisions we were making.
I didn't so much like that distraction and was ready to snap back to the moment. Fortunately, I was out of time to do much more reminiscing, and, honestly, didn't have too much more about which I could even reminisce. The fact of the matter was that Hannah and I had dated, gotten engaged and planned a wedding in little more than a year. Just three months earlier, even, I had ushered in the New Year as an unmarried man (albeit with a fiancée) and unemployed student, finishing out my final semester of law school. And barely a year before that, I had been a full-fledged bachelor reveling in the depravity of my second year of law school.
As it turned out, the whirlwind of activity in the fifteen months that led me from the start of the most serious and committed relationship of my life to the wedding at hand had helped prepare me for what the first three years of married bliss was about to drop on me. By the end of the first calendar year of our marriage—before we had even celebrated our first anniversary—I had not only endured my wedding and the acquisition of a ten-year-old son but the birth of a daughter, the state bar exam and a housing crisis to boot. And by the time our third anniversary rolled around, I had endured another wedding, another housing crisis, a veritable plethora of Judeo-Christian-American holidays and a lifetime’s worth of in-law debacles.
Many people have told me that any lesser man would’ve crumbled under the weight of the early years of my marriage. I’m sure, however, that any other man also wouldn’t have been as hopelessly clueless as I was in going through it all. Everything happened so quickly that I didn’t really bother trying to process it. Instead, I bounced from family conflict to family conflict and significant life event to significant life event without so much as a second thought, just thinking it was the way things were supposed to be. It took the perspective of three years to look back and laugh at all that Hannah and I had endured along the way.
But the evening hardly ended there. My roommate and I had the good sense to turn the keys of the car over to our sober girlfriends for the drive home. Unfortunately, however, we did not have the good sense to not convince them to stop at the nearest liquor store for a couple bottles of Brut. Neither, as it turns out, did we have the good sense to not uncork one of those battles after an unnecessary but spirited discussion among the four of us about the state’s open container laws as they applied to the backseat of our moving car. The advice emanating from our more logical girlfriends in the front seats of the vehicle was quickly rendered moot as the two of us were able to muster enough dexterity to finally uncoil the wire and pop the cork atop the bottle of excessively cheap—and warm—bubbly.
I chuckled to myself--or out loud, maybe--and tried to retrain my focus on the penultimate bridesmaid strolling down the aisle. But just over her right shoulder, I espied another face, this of a soon-to-be in-law brought to mind the earliest controversy our wedding plans created. It was my first ever Jewish holiday dinner and, consequently, my first exposure to kugel, beef brisket (that wasn't barbecued, anyway) and gin and tonics (although that may have been more of a family thing than a Jewish thing). And, as it turned out, it was my first exposure to religious strife.
The Jewish/Gentile thing had obviously not been insurmountable for the two of us. Hannah, the woman who would be my bride in a few short moments, had come of age in a not-so-observant Jewish family though she had gone through a bat mitzvah and confirmation. I, on the other hand, had grown up in an evangelical Christian church and attended a nondenominational Christian college. But as different as our backgrounds may have been initially, the years we had spent sorting out our faith and beliefs on our own were remarkably headed down similar paths. Hannah had been attending a church that she really enjoyed for a couple years with a friend, and I had pretty well cast aside the dogma and doctrine that I felt did little more than smother a meaningful relationship with God.
However, although Hannah's family had not been particularly observant in their Judaism, my presence as a Gentile in their midst stirred up some not so mild concerns about how that would play out in our wedding ceremony. One relative was concerned that a pastor might be involved in officiating our ceremony. Another couldn't fathom why we would have the ceremony on Shabbat, not that anyone observed it anyway. And another was convinced Hannah's deceased grandfather would be disappointed in the decisions we were making.
I didn't so much like that distraction and was ready to snap back to the moment. Fortunately, I was out of time to do much more reminiscing, and, honestly, didn't have too much more about which I could even reminisce. The fact of the matter was that Hannah and I had dated, gotten engaged and planned a wedding in little more than a year. Just three months earlier, even, I had ushered in the New Year as an unmarried man (albeit with a fiancée) and unemployed student, finishing out my final semester of law school. And barely a year before that, I had been a full-fledged bachelor reveling in the depravity of my second year of law school.
As it turned out, the whirlwind of activity in the fifteen months that led me from the start of the most serious and committed relationship of my life to the wedding at hand had helped prepare me for what the first three years of married bliss was about to drop on me. By the end of the first calendar year of our marriage—before we had even celebrated our first anniversary—I had not only endured my wedding and the acquisition of a ten-year-old son but the birth of a daughter, the state bar exam and a housing crisis to boot. And by the time our third anniversary rolled around, I had endured another wedding, another housing crisis, a veritable plethora of Judeo-Christian-American holidays and a lifetime’s worth of in-law debacles.
Many people have told me that any lesser man would’ve crumbled under the weight of the early years of my marriage. I’m sure, however, that any other man also wouldn’t have been as hopelessly clueless as I was in going through it all. Everything happened so quickly that I didn’t really bother trying to process it. Instead, I bounced from family conflict to family conflict and significant life event to significant life event without so much as a second thought, just thinking it was the way things were supposed to be. It took the perspective of three years to look back and laugh at all that Hannah and I had endured along the way.
