Kids will groan when you tell a story, complaining that they've heard it a hundred times. Then, one day, unaccountably, they'll ask you to tell it again. Go figure.
The wedding of Marlis and Glenn was relatively low-key, perhaps in keeping with the conventions of second marriages. Some second marriages. One afternoon, we loaded the kids into the pink station wagon and drove over to the house of one of Marlis’s WSU friends, whose husband was a
judge. As we drove down a street of suburban
Wichita houses, Marlis said “It’s one of these, I think.”
“Which one?” you might ask. I know I did.
“I’m not sure,” she said.
“Maybe you could just knock on a few doors and ask?”
Premonitions, premonitions.
At this point, the three kids noticed that they were a
block or so away from a friend’s house, and wanted to know if they could go
visit. Right then.
“Not now,” said their mother. “Glenn and I are getting married right now.”
I thought they already knew, since they seemed to be neatly dressed for it, but maybe not.
Somehow we found the judge’s house, went in, and began
a wedding ceremony that had been promised to be the equivalent of a brief courthouse
civil proceeding.
Since Marlis had not long before been hospitalized in traction for her
back, the first significant pause came when the judge asked for a promise of lifelong
fidelity “in sickness and in health.” She peered at me out the corners of her eyes, looking for a
response, but by the time I realized what he had said, the moment had passed.
A more resounding silence came when the judge asked me
for a ring to give Marlis.
“Ring?”
“Here,” said Marlis, eventually--producing her mother’s wedding ring. . .with perhaps a hint of another sideward look as her own premonitions arrived on the scene.
Yeah, definitely a sideward look.
Just when things seemed to be over and settled--and completely out of keeping with the agreed-upon Wedding Ceremony Check-List--the judge announced
his wish to read aloud a relevant philosophical musing from a source purported to be
Native American. So he did, and at some
length. Really quite a bit of length. Something about nature, ownership, sharing, earth, oneness, the stars in the sky, the prairie, treading softly in one's moccasins, clean air, responsible stewardship of the land, letting what you love go free, the Great Spirit,
whatever. You could look it up.
The moment that most lingers in one’s memory, however,
came afterwards, as the judge escorted us all outside to his driveway.
“Wait a minute, ya gotta see this” he said, opening the garage door so that
we could view—and hear, and appreciate—his new riding lawnmower.
Sickness and health. Great Spirit. John
Deere. Your full-service wedding in Kansas.
