Thoughts on Things: Secrets of the Bride

When I married for the first time, we lived in Hawaii and I was two days shy of being 23 years old—quite young, actually, but old enough to know better, as my mother might have said. In fact, she probably DID say it, to someone else if not to me, since she and my father were not in favor of this marriage.

 

I was convinced that marriage would alter me immediately. Without delay, I would become an adult. My idea of an adult female, however, was not based on the examples of my mother and her friends. My view of an adult woman came from the movies.

 

An adult woman, I knew for sure, didn't wear ordinary house slippers on her feet; she wore mules. In the movies from the '40s and '50s, all women wore satin mules with their negligees (and all of them wore negligees; not a single one wore a flannel nightie).

 

So I bought myself a pair of mules before the wedding: white satin, open-toed and high-heeled, with a pouf of marabou at the vamp. Being mules, they of course had no back. Slipping my dainty feet into these satin mules would instantly transform me into an adult. I could hardly wait. I had no doubt about this coming transformation. It was unspoken but self-evident.

 

The other item that would turn the bride into an adult was a bed jacket. My bed jacket didn't have to be trimmed in fur or feathers, as many of them were in the movies, but it should be made of satin and lace, in ivory or a very feminine pale pink.

 

Unfortunately, time and money were both in short supply. Although I bought the mules, I never found the bed jacket that would help me make the transition from naïve girl to wise and all-knowing married woman. It might have made all the difference if I had.

 

At my request, my mother sent one of her homemade coffeecakes for us to serve at the "reception." The ceremony was on December 23, and Christmas was traditionally the time of year when she made yeast coffeecakes, so my mother set aside her misgivings about the marriage and she made a large coffeecake, shaped like a ring, and sent it to us in Honolulu.

 

Our honeymoon took place at a Diamondhead mansion that we were housesitting over the school Christmas break. Imagine a mansion in Honolulu, with lanais and pools and courtyards and balconies. Keep imagining. Make it larger. Embroider it a bit more, because this mansion was really, really nice. And we had it all to ourselves for ten days.

 

We set the reception up around the swimming pool, using the beautiful Brown Jordan pool furniture that came with the house. Our reception was attended by a dozen colleagues from our respective schools, including my three roommates and a couple of male teachers from my husband's school.

 

The next morning, my first morning as an adult married woman, I arose to fix breakfast. I put on my flowing batiste negligee over my flowing batiste nightie and slipped my feet into my satin mules. The mules were not comfortable. Was that a sign?

 

I began walking to the kitchen of this enormous mansion, to make coffee. I awkwardly high-stepped my way along the upper-level balcony that ran the full width of the house, then went down the outdoor stairway leading through the open-air lanai and the dining room. I walked through the room-sized pantry and finally into the kitchen, with its four sinks, two stoves, and two refrigerators.

 

My feet hurt already.

 

It didn't take long for me to realize that it would take more than a pair of magic marabou mules to effect my transformation to adulthood.

 

But I'm almost there now. I promise.

 

Copyright 2008 Ann Tudor   

www.anntudor.ca
http://scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com