Roses & honeysuckle

Everything I know about this wedding is third hand, and I may get some of the particulars wrong. But in my imagination the setting and colors are clean, the participants mindful—altogether an alternative model for a wedding in our time, in this moment now.

The fact that it took place in the morning distinguishes it from most weddings of this age. The time may have been chosen because of weather; it was summer, and more than 80 years ago: no air conditioning. But probably it was chosen because the couple would spend most of the day driving to reach their wedding trip destination in Colorado, and automobiles were slower then, and there were no fast highways, no interstate.

The wedding took place at home, in the large two-story frame house built in the late 19th century on the farm established about 40 years earlier when the family came from Friesland in Germany (German was the language of the home). E. wore a simply styled dress of her own making. Her hair was dark and bobbed. W. wore a cleaned-lined woolen suit with a vest, and it set off his tall frame and thick, wavy hair piled up in curls.

All the leaves were added to the large table in the dining room so that 20 could sit. It was set for a full breakfast, with a damask tablecloth and the china, the silver, the crystal glasses. All the best pieces, but nothing beyond what was needed. Roses and honeysuckle from the garden were arranged in small vases along the length of the table.

The group gathered in the large parlor, and E. came down the stairs, and the couple stood at the front window for a ceremony of only a few minutes—only the necessary words spoken, the agreement they made, the exchange of rings.

Then they all sat down. I imagine the smells: the eggs and bacon, the small sweet cakes, the tiny glasses of peach brandy, and the roses and honeysuckle.

*

I’ve been to this farm, up near the Nebraska border, stood in the cavernous grainery made of cottonwood lumber from the trees right along the Republican River. I have visited the descendants, still in Friesland, of the ones who said farewell to the family who sailed away, and I’ve seen the church where the farewell ceremony was held, where they said goodbye forever.

I have this all third-hand, as I said, but it was so well-remembered by the one who told me, who had it second-hand, that it has become a family story.

When I was married, I wanted my community gathered around me, to witness my intent and hold me accountable, and more than 200 were there on my day. But now, years on, I know I have to hold myself accountable—take care of myself so I can offer the best of myself. Suddenly we have been thrown into a life that, in some ways, keeps us as spread out as people were in the 1930s, when E. and W. were married, and I am astonished at the privilege and choices I have, and aware of the graceful way my community is managing life during a pandemic. Some now, the lucky ones, are taking up the trowel, the book, more often. At my North Lawrence garden, more of the neighbors wander by and ask about flowers, talk about the gardens they are planning.

I think daily about sacred space—mine: the garden, the trail, the understanding between me and a friend. Surely anyone getting married needs sacred ceremonial space they step into and then out of. Sometimes I create a literal space, maybe a ring of branches on the ground, into which they step. But the space is there in concept even if not consciously created. And it can remain in the memory and even in the imagination of descendants.