13 September 2010
Anniversary
(Mom and Raven, Rector St. John in the background, 2008. Photo Socotra)
I looked down at the pool last night around two. Up in the middle of it, again, not out of anxiety. It just feels natural these days. The blue water of Big Pink’s pool was steaming in the night, the water vapor ghostlike against the glow of the underwater lights.
It had been so cold Saturday that an hour’s paddling had downright piercing energy. Leo’s guys had turned on the heater in the basement, and by the time it cooked all night and all day Sunday, it was the temperature of blood.
It was OK. I would have been outraged earlier in the season, when the old folks complained of the refreshing chill, but it is well and truly into the new season and I found the warmth comforting in the second dip of a Sunday.
Each on is precious now, and I have to sort out some other form of exercise, since there are only two days to go, and I will have to wait all week to get back in.
Then it is the winter of discontent, even if the Fall is yet to come.
There is a lot of that going around, and I had walled out the situation Up North. There was no reported jail-break by my wily and determined Mother. I outsource my thoughtfulness to Amazon and the FTD; who maintain my brain in a server in New York, and periodically remind me of when I am supposed to care about things.
It is useful. I got an e-mail reminding me of the upcoming 62nd anniversary of Mom and Raven’s wedding in 1948. I sent flowers, and promptly forgot about it in the trauma of the great transition. I had been dreading my weekly Sunday call to them, afraid I would get sandblasted by Mom. Instead, Raven pounced on the phone, and talked in my direction for several minutes.
It was the most engaged I have heard him in a long time, though we could not get to the end of any particular sentence. That was immaterial.
Mom got on the line eventually, and was quite mellow and glad to hear from me. She said that no one else had called for the Anniversary, and that they had even forgotten it themselves. Which is to say that she had forgotten, since Raven cannot recall breakfast.
I sighed, but was pleased that Mom seemed to be settling in. She did not mention the car and only the house, tangentially. She said she wants a "studio" for Raven, so he can start drawing again.
I don't know if she understands that is not going to happen, and there is an activity center upstairs where she could set him up with paper and pens. She was very grateful about the babysitting service Anook set up for him, and the chance to continue to go to her clubs without her shambling ball and chain.
Anook had stage-managed a big recreation of their vows two years ago, when Raven was taking over my Dad, and we all pretended not to notice.
It was pretty remarkable, in retrospect, the occasion of their 60th year together was just in the nick of time.
The little church is around the corner of Madison Avenue, at E. 29th, just barely.
When it was new, one hundred and fifty years ago, it was known by the formal name of the Church of the Transfiguration. Then, it was on the outskirts of the city with nothing but farmland and trees to the north. Now, of course, it is southern Mid Town, and walking distance from the hotel off Herald Square.
Sixty-two years ago, our father and mother waited nervously in the garden for their appointed moment in The Brides Chapel. The wedding party then was smaller than the one two years ago, though three of the original participants were here; Mom and Dad, of course, and Ray-the-Usher, who had introduced them more than a half century before.
The Maid of Honor and Best Man are no longer with us, though the children of both were in the crowd to commemorate the union, and a generous sampling of the seven grandchildren, and the unions of the brothers and sisters. That celebration was not just for the survival and commitment of one couple, but for the whole generation that is now down to just the two of them.
Rector St. John performed the blessing ceremony at the exact minute- two o’clock sharp.
In the depths of the Depression, the Little Church took on the mission of providing a dignified and affordable place for couples to wed. It was the subject of a New Yorker Magazine cover in 1934, Rector St. John said, and when the war was over the demand for weddings was so crushing that lines of couples gathered in this very garden, the bell tolling joyfully every fifteen minutes or so, every day of the week except Sunday mornings.
“There are many who return here,” he said. “Just last week we blessed a couple who were celebrating their sixty-second anniversary, and we have many children of those marriages who come as well. There are people from all fifty states who were married here in the heyday, and many overseas as well who consider this a special place.”
The Rector then cleared his throat, and said a brief homily about life and the strength of marriage as he asked Mom and Dad to walk down the aisle. Dad had Mom by the arm, and I could almost see the slim young woman from Ohio and the dashing thin Navy Pilot as they passed.
He is thin again, but looking almost translucent last week now that the mental fires that raged in his brain have burned his essence away.
The tears did not really start until I saw Dad struggle to get down on his knees next to Mom, and Rector St. John assisted him to the cushion. There was a piece that the bride and groom were supposed to read, but Dad could not see the words, and as usual Mom took care of it, reading the text in her clear high voice.
There was not a dry eye in the house when they walked back up the aisle, arm in arm. The Clexton pushed a button unobtrusively next to the door, and the bell began to ring. It is the same bell, with the same deep tone of joy that had rung for them sixty years before.
Dad could still understand what was happening around him, two years ago.
It was a damned good thing we did it then, you know? This year they didn’t remember..
Copyright 2010 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
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