Bellingham, Washington; February 24, 2014
There is snow on the road, which some might consider an omen. Not us. Not
after two years of Florida swelter, of longing to be colder, of liking at least a
suggestion of winter. Ice on the windowsills. Frost on the grass. A shiver sharp
as good luck.
We wear black dresses. Not so fancy we couldn’t wear them again—though we
haven’t. We carry bright flowers from the Farmer’s Market, arranged by your
sister into bouquets we won’t toss until the next day—and then, only over our
shoulders, only into the Bay.
How strange it was to write where our parents were born in order to procure
the license—to have to print their names on that form at all. A narrative
altered but never erased. A lineage notarized into law by one county clerk or
another. No true new beginnings. And what if we lied or didn’t know or
refused to remember—would we be denied our right to wed, again?
But here is the sun recusing itself from the day, and here the upper room of
Le Chat Noir, flooded with errant light. Here are eleven friends assembled—
one officiating, one reading a poem, another signing as witness to the
speaking of vows, the sharing of rings, and two little girls playing pretend-
wedding afterwards while no one rushes in to say what our mothers always
said—girls can’t marry other girls! They said this often, with words and
without them, the complex machinery of their speech and silence, the fields
they plowed deep in us, so the dream of this day was impossibly furrowed.
Our fathers, who denied such dreams could exist.
We do not smash cake into each other’s mouths or toss garters to a flock of
eager groomsmen. There are no groomsmen, and no bridesmaids either,
which means no one is singled out for being single or dubbed a “matron”
because she has already signed on a dotted line, given herself to another.
I am not thinking of my parents’ house two hours south of here, or of their
other house at the shore, the one I have never seen. I am not thinking of the
weathervane on their roof that announces THE WADES live here, or of the
elephantine hedges that swell along their borders, in order to mask the fence
that masks the yard. The contradiction in terms: declaring themselves, then
hiding. I am not even thinking of the difference between secrecy and privacy,
which was once explained to me as the difference between what we carry as
shame and what we keep for ourselves as an act of self-respect.
I was not ashamed, and yet I cannot believe it was self-respect that compelled
me once, from the post office in this very town, to make six photocopies of
my thesis—that first collection of lesbian love poems—and then to address six
manila envelopes with such meticulous script to the residences of their most
cherished friends. “Your mother had to give up her clubs because of you!” my
father chided through the phone. “You shamed her in front of everyone!” And
though it was my right to claim my love, I regret I ever once used love to
punish someone else, even if it was my mother, who could not love the woman
I had become.
No, I am not thinking of them as we cross the threshold into our room at The
Chrysalis, a grand hotel for which they were breaking ground just as we
moved away. But if I were, I would send a small blessing to my parents
watching Jeopardy! in one of their homes, eating popcorn and drinking Shasta
(diet, of course), my mother impassioned as she calls out, “What is Burma,
Alex?” and “What is the Prime Meridian?”
I am not thinking of them, though, or how even if they knew I had just married
my true love on their side of the country, neither would have found the—what
would you call it, Alex?—the wherewithal?—to come.
