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October 21, 2002 - Surprises
Consider this: we moved over Christmas the year I was fifteen. My father carefully swaddled our already-decked tree in black plastic garbage bags, put it in the trunk of the station wagon, and drove it from the farm to the house by the sea where we lived for three months until the next house was ready to receive us. Christmas Eve arrived a few days later, and my father, as he does almost every year, began to feel that perhaps he hadn't provided enough in the way of presents for his wife and daughters. So he went out alone on a last-minute shopping spree. I don't recall all of the strange presents that surfaced on Christmas morning as a result of that foray. Only one. The tall, heavy box that I opened last because I had Absolutely No Idea what was in it. And what was inside that tall, heavy, mysterious box? What had my father purchased for his fifteen-year-old daughter, who wouldn't have a kitchen of her own for seven more years? A blender. A really nice blender with a lovely array of speeds and functions to choose from. A blender that lives in her kitchen to this very day, and a blender that she considers perhaps the finest gift she was ever given - because it was a complete and utter surprise. The last thing she ever expected to find when she opened up that box. I have always loved surprises. Ê And consider this: when Toby and I got married five years ago, the ill-will we encountered at the hands of my family more than counterweighed the good. I've written about this already - how I don't recall any sort of congratulation from them when we announced our intentions in the fall, how painful it was for me - for all of us - to get through the combative year that followed, how difficult it was for me to try to accept that my father might not even attend our wedding, let alone walk me down the aisle. I am finding it easier to be forgiving these days, but my anger has been replaced by something else: sorrow. Here we were, Toby and I, two young people so in love and wanting only for those around us to share our joy and applaud our good fortune in one another. There were people who did that, friends and relations (relations of Toby's, mostly), but my bride-to-be happiness didn't seem to matter to the people I cared about the most: my mother and my father. My mother made numerous trips to Baltimore and did most of the things that the mother of the bride is supposed to do, but the joy that should have been there simply was not, and I couldn't help but notice. I couldn't help thinking how different she would be if this were the wedding she'd always dreamed of for her oldest daughter. How different everything would be when my sisters stood someday up in front of the minister and wed fine, Christian men. And what about my man? What was it about him that made him not good enough for them, for me? Why couldn't they look past the religious issue for just a moment and just see him, see him as I did, and rejoice for me? Ê Time has borne me out on every count. It's hard to spit these things out because I'm ashamed that I can't come up with better ways to say them, but: There is no way in which Toby has not helped to make my life joyous and whole. We love each other so much powerfully more than we did on our wedding day. I've been a little morbid lately for no good reason, and a few nights ago I realized that while I can accept the idea that I myself am not forever, the thought that "we two together" will end in death someday is almost more than I can bear. So if a man's part in a good marriage is to make his wife happy, my man has done that. If it's to keep a roof over her head and food on the table, he's done all that too. If it's to work with her through all of life's difficulties with patience and kindness, and to always try to meet her halfway, this he has also done. I knew, five years ago, that Toby would do all these things for me and more. I knew how unbelievably lucky I was to have found someone like him to spend his life at my side. And I wish that just once my parents had been able to put my conversion aside and say, you've chosen well. We're so happy for you. So proud of you. So grateful that you've found such a wonderful man to be your husband. I hear those words now from them both. But five years ago, when I needed to hear it the most, they stayed silent. And what's done is done and the past can't be changed, but I don't expect I'll ever really get over it. Ê So here we have a little story about an unexpected blender, and a longer one about wanting my family to be happy for me when good things happen. Take the two together and you might be able to imagine what I felt when I walked into my surprise baby shower yesterday. Ê I embraced every person in the room, even my sister's new roommate who I was meeting for the very first time. I smiled until I thought my face would stretch apart. I sat down and couldn't get up again for a long time because my knees were too weak to hold me up. I said "I can't believe this" about a hundred times. They were all so sure I knew. I knew that my whole family, as well as my aunt and cousin, were in town for the weekend, because they were all staying with us. But I thought that Diana had come along only because she was home from school anyhow for a dentist appointment. And I thought that Aunt Jeanie and my fifteen-year-old cousin had come to Providence so that they could check out some of the art colleges in town. The dentist thing turned out to be true. (The dentist even gave my sister a tiny, baby toothbrush to present to me.) But the art-school thing was a big fat hoax. My mother and my aunt - my whole family, Toby included - had been planning and plotting for weeks. My aunt, who works in a library, brought extra folding chairs all the way from New Jersey. I cried. I cried a lot. And after Toby left I don't think anyone in the room knew why |
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