When we gals, besotted, set the date, we sweated the particulars.
Not the matrimonial details. We had ordered the chuppah, the klezmer, the chocolate tiers.
We worried about family back East. Would they come through?
Would they come?
Then I made the announcement. Mom stared at her hands. I expected grief for her unborn grandchildren, anger at the permanence of my “lifestyle,” anxiety about mothering two brides.
She looked at me, shoulders sagging. “You’ve planned your wedding without me.”
What was I thinking? This was the mother who, for my sister’s nuptials, had negotiated everything from headpiece to hora. She needed an assignment.
But this was my close-up. I needed control.
“A party the evening before,” Mom decided, speed dialing, “so the families can become friends.”
She booked the Cliff House, perused menus, penned invitations.
The day after Mom’s soirée, the simcha proceeded without a catch. The glass broke. Guests sang “Siman Tov U’Mazel Tov.” My careful planning had paid off.
But some things had eluded my to-do list. My father-in-law swinging Mom around the dance floor. Dad, sobbing, grasping my mother-in-law. Bubbe blessing her new granddaughter.
For the first time since my teens, Mom was right.
The families came. They came through.
And thanks to Mom, they came as family.
And if Mom could be right, maybe I could learn that the aisle was more than just a runway for modeling ecru silk. It was a passage to adulthood.
Which, finally, was just the close-up I was ready for.