Mother of the Bride Impressions -- Part TWO

Afterwards

                           
Boy do my feet ache.  And my ankles, wrists, ears and pinky toes.  Weddings are physically exhausting. So many many thoughts.   Quite different than Mother of the Groom.  I would compare it to the difference in attending a commencement ceremony for your child (MOG).  Happy, smiles, lots of pride.  To holding the graduation party for 200 at your own home.  Responsible, brain-draining, expensive (ha) and cheerfully chaotic (MOB).  It is as 'hands on' as anything gets. 

Advice for future Mothers of the Bride: Get yourself two 'matrons of honor' for yourself.  Two more people who aren't brain-fuzzy from all the excitement and willing to run out for forks, run upstairs for the scissors, text the person lost in the country, thank the hairdresser when you forget, keep an eye on the time, trim the shaggy chiffon three times if necessary.  Someone to remember to confirm the nail appointment, figure out which nearby florist has baby's breath, and not order twice as much pizza as we need.  Someone who will know at all times 'Where is the father of the bride?'  'Where did the bridesmaids go?'  'Did the photographer get a pic yet with grandma and grandpa?'  'Where is the food?  Where is the saran wrap/the veil/the salsa?   Because me, I wanted to just sit and observe, and soak in all the happenings.  Of course I did, lots and lots, but I also felt like two more me's would have been so useful!

Funny (?...?) things that happened on the wind up to the wedding:

• Flowers. The flower delivery was scheduled for Wednesday morning.  The flowers were delivered but only the lilies showed up.  Thurs: the flowers didn't show up, long wait, finally an email that the plane didn't land.  Thurs 5pm: neighbor comes home from work and brings the flowers that were delivered to his porch and sat there all day.  blah. Still missing the hydrangeas (they came Friday, its all good)
• Directions. North main, south main, construction, CR 17 to CR 20 to old CR 17 to ???  Two chapels on campus?  Phone died?  Cakes are 45 minutes in the opposite direction of where you are? Father of the bride is 12 miles to empty and is lost in the country?  An hour before we leave for the church? Thank you Lord for Google Maps and the kindness of strangers.  Send all people in twos!
• Steaming.  Not really a mishap, but if purchasing the tablecloths is half the price of renting them, assume 20 minutes per table cloth to steam out the wrinkles.  Let's see, 30 table cloths x 20 minutes each = 600 minutes or 6 hours.  With breaks, the two steamers we had running out of water every 9 minutes, heat up time, switching peeps, it was about 10 hours on Friday.  
• Weather.  I knew this from Chris' wedding but all of these weather predictions are for May 18, 2019, for many days leading up to the big day.  We were planning an outdoor wedding in the back of a huge field of grass.  We needed a dry day.  It snowed two inches four weeks earlier.  We didn't know what to think but it ended up sunny and high of 85 degrees on this date.  I'll take it!

                                

• Random: the father of the bride's phone rang during the ceremony.  He was too rattled to figure out how to turn it off.  The silver bells we had tied two-hundred bows onto were nowhere to be found for the send-off moment (we just clapped and cheered).  They were in the groomsmen's dressing room it turned out.  I brought earrings.  One from each of the two pairs I had for the occasion, not matching.  I didn't wear earrings (gasp).

Things that went pleasingly well:

• Having too big of a house is never a bad thing!  Having a large whirlpool tub in the bathroom of the parents' master suite averts some muscle pain. Our airbnb saved the day many times. 
• Chuck and I (and my sister) shopping for cake plates for the centerpieces at goodwills and estate sales was a sweet way to anticipate the coming wedding. 
• Cake in the middle of each table meant no long line and fresh slices for everyone in just the size they wanted. 

                                     

• Having family come a few days early so we could eat pizza and watch the swans on the lake who we named 'Nat and Lily' and laugh together at Jim Gaffigan videos before the tension and nerves of the final day set in? Priceless. 
• If you can arrange a nice gentle breeze like we had it makes the bridesmaids dresses and the veil look pretty magical. Just sayin'
• Daughter things: Watching your youngest do her oldest sisters' makeup and it coming out perfectly. An amazing scrapbook Anna and Julia designed with pics of the five months and letters from special women in Lily's life to read on her wedding day and afterwards. Signs all hand-lettered by the artist-daughter.  Short-bread baked with love by Anna. 556 shortbread cookies to be specific :).  And two other desserts baked by Nat's sisters!

                            

• Bride and groom things: Having a daughter-bride with great imagination and event-planning skills and an eye for details made everything go better than expected. She was so patient with all of us. I think I kind of like her :)  Having a groom with such a sense of humor to lighten the mood and to calm everyone's worries, especially his bride-to-be. Good guy, that Nat. 
• Friends and Family things: a wedding is very different when you are hosting than all those weddings you've attended.  Having family and friends fly in from Texas, San Francisco, drive from four and five hours away, my friends Leslie and Sean with six kids on board drove from Iowa, that all touched my heart.  I'm going to try to remember it next time I get one of those pesky wedding invitations, lol. 
• New in-laws things: they welcomed us to their church and their family.  Their hospitality was genuine.  And they stayed long after the party to cleanup as church had to be held in that room the next morning.  They let me leave behind catered food that would feed dozens (we had a lot of leftover food), 15 or so 'half cakes' and even 30 dirty table cloths.  They work so well as a team!
• Son and daughter-in-law things: Jenny and Chris did the work of 12 x-men.  They were on everything.  From Chris driving up for the bachelor party to them both doing a majority of that 10 hours of steaming, to picking up the cakes (sounds innocent, not).  That is 22 cakes in separate boxes, across 20 miles of bumps and turns on ten different roads.  Then transferring them inside the church and onto the cake plates.  Talk about walking a tight rope!  This plus they did literally 5 dozen other tasks.  

                                           

• Husband things: watching him tear-up, watching him dance with his daughter, watching him walk her up the aisle, it was all just like in the movies, for once in my life (ha).  He worked way harder than me as always.  Such a great guy, Lily's dad. 
• Most importantly, all the things that didn't go as planned, that weren't quite as picturesque, weren't exactly on point or lined up or on time?  No one knows!  The guests don't know, the photographers don't know.  To everyone else it appears it all went as planned so no worries. 
• God things: the breeze, the very funny pastor Luis (Nat's oldest brother), the lilies of the valley that only bloom one week of the year, in full bloom, the guests and bridal party traveling from far away, the love and kindness in the air, a special moment, the group prayer. Of course, every little thing comes from above. 

                           
I thought I was seriously looking forward to the day after the wedding because of all the drama, tears, tensions, worries, details, details, details but instead I do feel a teeny bit like a popped balloon.  But mostly I feel very satisfied that we did our best, that people had fun, and that Lily and Nat have begun their marriage, the reason for everything we did.  The Godly man I prayed for every communion Sunday for my sweet Lily, is Nathaniel, and I can't wait to see what love and life brings them.

  Praise be to God!

Mother of the Bride Impressions -- Part ONE

 Before the big day

This is the sidewalk Lily rode her tricycle on when she was six years old.

These are the lily of the valley that have been growing there next to that air conditioner (and all over this 122 year-old yard) for decades before she arrived on this earth.  I picked some tonight.  I'm taking them to use in her bridal bouquet.  A little piece of home, lilies for Lily from the home she grew up in and played hard, fell and skinned her knee bad enough that her little seven year old voice screeched 'if its bone just kill me now dad'.

One minute, riding the purple tricycle.  Moments later braces, then college. Next minute going down the aisle with her dad.  Just like all the sappy songs, it is true.

So, Mother of the bride.  It was so much easier than I'd dreamed in the planning stages.   Actually I'm typing this five days before the wedding, but motherofthebriding begins from the moment of the engagement.  All kinds of fun.  Exciting roller coaster with well-wishes, dress shopping, my dress shopping, venues, meals, cakes, and much much more as any good pinterest board labeled 'someday' will tell you.  I was lucky enough to have a daughter-bride who was efficient, knew what she wanted, and frugal to boot.  My motto for five months has been 'The bride gets to decide.' and I've tried to live by it, and not explain how much better plum would look or daisies or chocolate cake.... I've mostly succeeded at this.  My tongue may be bleeding a bit.

With five days to go it feels like it is finally here.  Finally time to pack the bags, drive the miles, buy the flowers, cut the strawberries.  Hands-on time!  I've been looking forward to this part.  It won't be easy, but it will be memorable.

But like graduations, weddings it turns out, for me are about seeing that little girl again.  All grown up.  Or not? Maybe in dress-up clothes with the high heels and the beads.  Moved out of the house 8 years ago?  Or still cartwheeling across the front yard?  Still holding the perennial lemonade stand.  Still dancing a jig with her sisters to some cheetah girls tune, making a snowman, or directing her sisters in pretend commercials?  Still smelling like chlorine from her years on the swim team.

But it isn't any of those things, they happened yesterday, and now we're thinking about tomorrow.  When she starts a life with a great guy, one God planned for her and she for him.  The future is a big blank whiteboard just waiting to be written on, and the past is a million little memories and right now, we are in the few days between those points.  The tipping point.  The time in-between.

It's A God Thing

I'm the kind of relate-able Christian who questions things, asks questions, asks God, and tries to stop thinking long enough to listen.  The kind of Christian who is never as grateful as I should be or as prayerful.  I'm not the kind of Christian who doesn't drink or dance, although I try not to swear, but that is my mom-side mostly. But, I find it all fascinating and I love learning about how God is working in people's lives.

I pray regularly and irregularly, and at different times of day or night.  Sometimes ten seconds, or ten minutes.  Sometimes writing prayers, sometimes thinking them.

This story is about my friend Leslie Masterson and her Chinese daughter Jillian. Leslie found Jillian on an adoption website in late 2010.  Adoption is a long complicated journey much like that game I never liked, "The Game of Life." where things are always sending you back to the beginning and it never ends. Ever.

International adoption has a 43 step game board and she was on about step ten or so when I told her I had a dream.  "I had a dream that you were with your baby on Easter."  Leslie just nodded nicely and said something very reassuring like, "We are still a minimum of 12 months out from actually getting to travel to China.  It is a long process."  She seemed sorry to disappoint me. Now I also had in this dream a vision of her Chinese daughter growing up and she was doing ballet on a stage in a pink tutu and also one of her wearing a red dress and playing violin.  I prayed about it that week and said "Leslie, I keep feeling like you will have your new babe by Easter.  I see an Easter basket and plastic eggs."  and she and Sean just reassured me that couldn't happen.

Well not only did they have Jillian by Easter, but their "Gotcha Day" was on Easter Sunday.  It was Monday morning in China, but it was Easter Sunday in Pekin, IL at the first moment they laid hands on their precious, so precious girl.  Only six months from the time I had the dream.  It was impossible (not) but at least highly unlikely, that a first adoption, from China, could go through like silk.  Every one of those 43 hoops was jumped in record time.  At least this is how I remember it, now, five years later, and on my blog, we get to hear from my fragile memory.

When they were handed her, Jillian was over 2 years old, severely underweight, bruised, with an awful ear infection and sadly neglected.  They knew they were adopting a girl with cleft-palate.  They discovered within a few months she is low-verbal autistic.  On Easter Sunday 2011 she became a member of an amazing family.

And little did we know then, but now we do, that Leslie and Sean would go on to adopt two more Chinese babies.  And perhaps my dream covered all three.  One of them might play the violin on stage one day.  And I did get to see Jillian dance a ballet at Gull Lake one year.  She was off to the side shadowing the movements of a beautiful young lady who was doing ballet for the talent show.  And Jillian was entrancing, dancing in her silent land.

This dream is one of my God Things and I love it.

Here is Jillian's picture from her pre-adoption days and a picture of her today-- Miss Joy!

  

               

The Chinese government said she would never walk.  This girl climbs mountains!

My memory fails me more and more and I don't have any recall of some pretty wonderful experiences that I did, darn it, experience.  I am going to record them here occasionally.

p.s. If you want to read about Leslie's adoption adventures in more detail, here is a link to her blog. 

Mother’s day is not my favorite holiday…

I believe Hallmark and such make too big a deal out of Mother’s Day (and several other holidays).  I daydream of my own mother often (she died 16 years ago now), and don’t need a holiday to remember her.  I think of my own children daily if not hourly, and I always celebrate their birth (literally) and reminisce about my part in it on their birthdays. Now that I think of it I’m not very big on most holidays other than Christmas. Confession: I’m often glad when they are over.  But I love birthdays. I love vacations.  I love celebrating for no reason and I love celebrating my children’s important moments. I love the day after Thanksgiving when we are all in our pj’s playing Scrabble and watching reruns of Parks and Rec together. 

Mother’s Day is a holiday of exclusion for any woman who doesn’t happen to be a mom.   I know women who lead happy and full lives without children. I know people who have yearned for children and it has never happened for them.  I know people who have lost children, or lost parents certainly, and this holiday only brings them pain.  Why do we need to go there?

Being an introvert, I also dislike any occasion that makes me the center of attention.  Too much pressure.  Gosh a whole day I have to be happy!  My kids and husband usually do a fine job of marking the occasion too, you would be jealous.  I’m ungrateful, that is the root of it.

Now, you’re thinking, Toni isn’t usually so negative.  She is being a drag, it’s just a little holiday.  And you are right.  I’m being  nudged with thoughts of Dicken's Scrooge here so I’m trying to remember what he learns from all those ghosts.  Oh yeah, life is good, enjoy it.  Relationships are important so build into them while you can.  So I will.  I will enjoy myself and sincerely appreciate whatever pleasantries come my way.  I hope all of you will too, but I still secretly wish holidays were about an hour long and wanted to speak up for any others of you out there who do too.  Someone work on that.