Mother of the Groom

You, Jordan Lee Roher, are the apple of my eye, as you know quite well.  You are my only child, and a boy - the name and genetic heritage continues.  In Judaism, boys take pride of place.  Not as much as in previous generations, but still ...  Along with this antiquated thinking, I'm also a subscriber to the saying, "A son's a son till he takes a wife, but a daughter's a daughter the rest of her life".  I heard that often enough from my own mother and came to believe in the truth of it.  So, when you went off to college, I prepared myself for your eventual emotional leave-taking.

Another thing you know as well as anything, is how much I wanted a grandchild.  Marriage?  Yes, that's nice, but really anything will do as long as a child comes of it.  This horrifies you.  I'm joking, joking ... maybe. 

Fast forward four years of college.  Girlfriends?  I know of none.  I was heartened to learn that one purpose of your computer gaming club renting out the university movie theater and sponsoring a "Dance, Dance Revolution" competition was to meet girls. Progress?  Then you went to work in Tallahassee for a number of years.  Then you up and move to Seattle.  Relationships?  I hear of none.  My own mother might scoff at my angst, as what I did to her was perhaps worse.  I married soon after college graduation and then we waited 10 years, on purpose, before getting pregnant.  Poor mom.

In any event, one day while I was at work you called.  "Hi Mom."  "Is everything okay?"  "Yes.  I wanted to let you know that I met someone."  My heart leaps into my throat.  "Really?  And how do you feel?"  "I'm head over heels!"  This is, I hope, the beginning of exactly what I want, and a mere 11 years after you left college.  Patience is a virtue, but now both you and Lily are well into your 30's.  Not much time to lose.  Clock's ticking.  You take a year to get to know each other and then propose on the Seattle ferris wheel with a plastic ring in the shape of a cat in honor of her cat Tater, to which you are violently allergic, and start a series of weekly allergy shots - I knew it was love then. 

 

I had all my and my mother's diamonds but rarely wear jewelry, so it gave me great pleasure to give them to you, which enabled Lily to have some of them reworked into an engagement ring - almost the same thing I got from my mother.

Now it's time to prepare for the wedding.  My favorite story is Lily's mother, Laura's, reaction to one of the possible wedding venues.  As I recall it was a palace of black lacquer, red velvet and leopard print.  A genuine bordello in appearance.  Laura is taken aback and horrified.  Lily is none too happy and quite aware of her mother's reaction, while you, oblivious, have a number of nice things to say about the place.  I see this in my mind and it brings quite the smile.  

As mother of the groom and a widow, I have some specific duties: offer to pay for whatever you want (within my budget), provide the rehearsal dinner and make a speech at that dinner.  Oh dear.  A speech.  That speech takes up a good deal of my time, attention and preparation.  While I'm satisfied with it once it's completed, I find that I cannot, no matter how hard I try, say it without bursting into tears.  This will not do.  It'll make everyone uncomfortable including me.  But I come up with a solution that worked like a charm!  Before each paragraph, I penciled in something very inappropriate from the cartoon show South Park.  I would look at that, laugh to myself and then was able to say my speech without blubbering.  

I wasn't as prepared the next day however, when I saw Lily in her beautiful wedding gown.  Instant tears.  I know this about myself and am not too bothered when it happens.

                                                           What I remember from the wedding itself: your future nephew Henry (age 3?), crying and refusing to walk down the aisle, and Dan, his father, picking him up and carrying him while distributing the flower petals, the officiant (a woman whose name I don't remember) having the rings tied with a red ribbon passed around the room for everyone to bless and doing a lovely ceremony, eating the salmon and thinking how delicious it was and watching you and Lily dance.                                          

I also remember a moment when your tie needed straightening.  I stepped forward, but then caught myself, stepped back and let Lily take over.  She is now the person attending to your needs.  The son has taken a wife.

The place itself provided bragging rights for me for quite some time.  You're married in The Explorer's Club in Seattle in the most impressive room I've ever seen.  Everyone I showed it to - and that would be pretty much everyone I know - was in awe.  It was super gorgeous.  I still love the picture!

Your story goes forward, but it doesn't involve your wedding and it deserves more than one entry.  So ... to be continued.

Meeting Daddy

 

By some amazing quirk of fate, I got to attend the University of Miami.  What a revelation in warmth for a girl who had grown up freezing in Duluth, Minnesota.  My parents always vacationed on Miami beach and when I was old enough to take several weeks of schoolwork with me, I was taken along - otherwise I had to stay home and Grandma looked after me.  As a point of reference, their motel of choice was the Waikiki, where we had a small dark room, which is only memorable because when I got a horrible sunburn I had to spend a good bit of time inside. 

In 1967 I graduated high school, my parents sold their pharmacy to the assistant pharmacist, Don Pasek, and we moved to Hollywood, Florida.  I have no memory of the actual move, but I can clearly see my dorm room and roommate - Arden Hetson from Teaneck, NJ.  No idea what became of her.  

In retrospect, the room, in a boys and girls tower, was similar in some ways to a double prison cell.  A brand new prison cell.  The cinderblock walls were painted brownish-grey with heavy duty grey vinyl accordion closet doors on each side as you entered, built in four drawer dressers, and built in desks with shelves, all covered in dark brown formica.  Fitting neatly beyond were two extra-long grey vinyl mattresses on metal platforms.  The only outside light came from a single window between the beds with horizontal metal shutters that closed completely with a lever making the place an impenetrable hurricane fortress.  Today I would be horrified.  Then, I was enchanted.  Freedom.  Adulthood.  The height of luxury!

Because I was six months older than your father, I was a year ahead of him in school.  My freshman year was quite the learning experience: learning about pantie raids, learning that you should actually pay close attention in class or you'll be quite surprised when you walk into Intro to Religion to a test, that you fail and, the one I wanted to learn most, learning to smoke cigarettes.  I was the height of sophistication - in my own mind.  

For some reason, when it came time to register for classes - at the library - with paper slips, some of the classes I needed were filled.  I wound up taking some sophomore level classes my first year and then taking the freshman classes the following year.  So Daddy and I wound up in Econ 102 (macro-economics  I think) together.   As this was a required course, it was given in one of the larger amphitheater rooms.  Blue plush chairs with pull down seats and desks that folded up and over.  Nice.  Turns out I really enjoy the "dismal science," which makes some sense as I was studying to be a high school history teacher.  As I enjoyed the class, I paid little to no attention to my classmates, even the guy who sat behind me to my right and asked to borrow my notes on at least two occasions.  What he looked like and his name were a mystery I didn't feel the need to solve.

He, on the other hand as he told it, was smitten; although the time I decided to put my hair in pig-tails was quite a personal challenge for him.  Nevertheless, he persevered.  The days and weeks passed and his courage failed him.  I didn't seem interested in his academic to personal attempts at contact.  Finally, it was the day of the final exam.  It was now or never.  His plan was to finish and wait for me outside.  Unaware, I finished, handed in my paper and went immediately to the bookstore to quit lugging around this three pound tome and get some money back.  The sell back book window always had a line a mile long.  Not today.  I was the only one.  I should have been out of there in less than 5 minutes, but that's not how fate planned it.  Because there was no one outside, whoever should have been inside was busy with other things.  I waited and waited and waited.

Eventually, I noticed this guy very purposefully walking  toward me.  "He's going to ask me out" I said to myself "how flattering".  Sure enough, that's exactly what happened.  

The date was for dinner that night .  He had a friend he could visit who lived in the boy's tower, so he walked me back to the lobby and we went our segregated ways.  At the appointed time, I met him downstairs and now we had to walk to the parking lot.  He lived off campus so parking wasn't convenient to the dorm.  Being as shallow as I was and perhaps still am - hopefully not THAT much - I asked which car, in a fairly empty lot, was his.  "The green one".  "Yikes", said my brain.  The broken down green thing with peeling paint was not what I envisioned for Miss Princess.  "Oh, that one?" I asked in as nonchalant a voice as I could muster.  "No, the one on the other side."  And what to my wondering eye should appear, but an extremely snazzy, late model green Corvette.  Wowsers!

Turned out his father ( of course ) was something of a Corvette enthusiast who sometimes had one more car than people who drove, and Jan, probably having this date in mind some days before, had borrowed it  hoping to impress me I assume.  Worked like a charm.

I remember that night pretty clearly.  Dinner at Shoney's Bar-B-Q, which burned down some years later, a Corvette Club meeting, which I found quite boring and may have been the only one he ever went to, and a kiss.  I also learned he was Jewish, quite the plus if things got serious.  I knew I liked this guy.  I learned later that after walking me back he went to see his friend confessing he thought he'd found the one.

And 5 years later we were married.  And nine years after that you made your appearance.  And that's another story for another time.