This arbor lives in my garden. It’s been there ever since Joe and I married.
We married at the local Ruritan club, a sort of rural community center where members gather weekly, mostly to eat and talk, but also to plan good deeds for the community – teas, dinners, scholarships, yard sales and the like. The Ruritan also rents the building out for weddings, graduation parties, birthday parties or any function that is too large for someone’s house.
I decided that we should marry under an arbor. I had thought Joe might construct one, but he brought this one home from Lowe’s. For the hall, I did most of the decorating, not with fabulous results I might add…. I chose yellow and purple, which seemed like a fine plan, but the plastic purple table cloths and the bright yellow paper plates were really rather garish. A friend of mine, T., had really wanted to take on a mother-of-the-bride role. She scared the daylights out of me about six months before the wedding by showing up with some how-to-plan a wedding books. She slept over and I woke up, sleepless in the middle of the night to return to the kitchen table, where I studied the books with dismay, completely appalled by the countless tasks I apparently needed to complete. “I’m going to see one of my friends married properly,” said T., not at all approving of the floral dress I had found at Goodwill. I was ready to call the whole thing off and go down to City Hall.
Luckily, morning laid rest to my nighttime terrors and I realized that I did not, after all, need to follow the book, nor did I need to make T. happy. She wasn’t my mother, so I didn’t have a complicated any need to struggle for a balance between independence and keeping her happy as I might have done with my own mother. I could wear what I wanted! I didn’t have to follow the terrifying manuals from cover to cover! Or do anything they said if I didn’t want! And, despite T. saying it was much too complicated, I could have food! Food was the only thing that mattered to me, really. I felt quite strongly that our guests get a good meal for their troubles. It was the Ruritan club, so they weren’t going to get any alcohol, proscribed on those premises. But they should definitely get some fabulous food.
But I wanted T. to be happy, even if she wasn’t my mother. Maia said, “give her something to take care of.” Better advice was never given. I asked T. if she would take care of the flowers. She spent the next few months reading up on flower arranging. She showed up on the morning of the wedding with a carful of flowers, greenery and vases. We hung some white veiling across the top (As a woman of 50 or so, I wasn’t about to wear the veil of a virginal bride, but veils seemed appropriate for a wedding) and T. turned Joe’s arbor into the most lovely part of the whole wedding. I remember one of the wedding guests saying, “oh, wow, they’re real flowers.” T. had flowers all over both rooms and they were all lovely as well, mitigating to a large extent the garish table decorations I had produced. But the arbor was the pièce de résistance.
