Invitations Like Fingerprints

Tags

craft, engagement, guests, invitations, personality, planning, printing, scrapbook, stationary, wedding

Black ink dusts my fingers after forty. Digs under my nails after fifty five-by-seven sheets are cut to size. Each one on top of the pile is tilted a bit differently. There’s more of a black edge on that one before the last. A crooked corner on this one, unnoticeable without comparing it to the straight one next door. The lines are imperfect, like irregular swirls on the fingertips I take to the sink. Fifty done, fifty more to go.  Soap suds rush down the drain in gray trails with diluted ink.

The invitations need to be cut here, on the coffee table at the apartment, because I forgot them on the train this afternoon. This may be better. Cheaper. I like how the rustic imperfection matches the Western rough edges of everything else so far. Halfway done and things are starting to show personality.

The envelopes came out of the box in a perfect pile without a mark. Now the corners are jagged, the pile is puffy with air, the return addresses bleed burgundy, acid-free markings. Penmanship instead of smooth calligraphy. The beginning shows small tight writing, the hand of my husband-to-be. At the end, he had to leave for work; the letters grew large, the spaces between lines, thick, but the information, the same.

Your invitation will be yours, the only one like it. And we made it just for you. Sat and sweat at this coffee table, in our apartment-to-be, the Dennisons-to-be, because we want you to be here with us. Some of you won’t, but it won’t be because we didn’t ask.

the cowboy [4/5]

Tags

adventure, cowboy, engagement, history, love, marriage, relationship, restaurant, story

the waiting                    the clues[2/5]                    the ring[3/5]

I met him in a bar. Neither of us were there looking for phone numbers. I wasn’t just one young lady with a cocktail, in a bar where he was buying drinks for women until he took one home. That kind of beginning isn’t our kind of beginning. Still, he wasn’t mine for a long time.

I met him in a bar. He was the bartender. I, the waitress. He thought me too loud, dare I say obnoxious. I thought him haughty, conceited even. But then I caught a better glimpse. A striking young man tossing limes in the air, spinning while they slide onto the lip of the glass in his hand. He laughs with his whole body, his smile stays on his face a while after what was funny. When he speaks to customers, he crouches down at the table or leans comfortably over the bar rail; it makes everyone feel like they’ve known him for years. Like he’s charming and he loves them more than as a customer. He says he gets it from his dad.

And not only that from dad.  His middle name, too, which I took to using frequently, months into our slow-paced, casual courtship years ago. His full name is not Bradley, as I once imagined or expected it to be, but just Brad. Brad Alan, like on the disc covers I printed for him once, before studio days, and like he uses on posters for his solo shows in New York City.

When I wasn’t sure how to proceed, I learned most about how he would treat me, the way he was falling in love with me so tenderly. Bursting at every seam, cheeks aching from laughter, we filled sunrise to sunset with adventure and jokes, exploring our Midwestern city creatively. I pretended we were only friends, pretended no one knew I’d fallen for him. He never stepped where I didn’t let him go.

We didn’t make every decision with perfect precision. I could’ve drawn some of our lines with invisible pen, I reckon. But the history of us is something I’ve come to love. For years, I’ve been adventuring and exploring with this cowboy. We’ve dreamed so many dreams together. For years, figuring what makes him tick, dissecting the world together, asking questions, loving the mystery of life.  Only the very beginning of these next forty years. 

the ring [3/5]

Tags

Chicago, engagement, family, frugality, grandma, heirloom, history, love, marriage, money, proposal, relationship, summer, symbols, tradition, value, wedding ring

the waiting [1/5]          the clues [2/5]

While on the phone, approaching the border of Michigan and Indiana the other day, I learned the possible difference between cheap and frugal.

It was suggested to me that frugality is interested in a good deal, in the best value for the product purchased. Frugality likes to own nice things, things that don’t break because they’re mass-produced or put together with soft plastic pieces, things made with durable fabric, things that will last and look beautiful. Things that will flatter. Things that have worth but are also on sale. Cheapness has interest only in the price tag. When the price tag is as low as possible, cheap wants in. If there is a chance ice might melt in the Arctic and the price could drop a few quarters, cheap would prefer to wait.

I would like to be frugal, I said. But I fear I fall into the trap of being cheap. I could dance around the semantics of the issue, but the truth is, I’m cheap.  And I’d prefer not to be.  This lesson in definitions flipped a switch for me. I have to tweak my price tag obsession some days.

On the tail end of this DNA malfunction inside of me is the idea of value. In our early conversations, I didn’t value wedding rings at all. Wasn’t interested; wouldn’t even window shop if it were up to me. But there are two of us in this conversation, and I was open to talking about it, exploring my aversion to what I perceived as an empty tradition. Open, yes; but remaining uninterested, true.

I researched a number of hours. Found unique designs, sought after the origin of the ring, the meaning behind the ring finger and the circular shape, browsed photos of thousands of precious metals, even wooden rings to get ideas. Visited discussion boards as an unassuming guest, extracting the opinions of strangers.

As I chewed on the idea of value months ago, I mentioned as an example, passing down fine jewelry from someone like my grandmother. My grandma and I were very close; she died about five years ago from breast cancer that she’d been battling my entire lifetime. I hadn’t seen grandma’s ring since I sat on her daybed, making mountains of her wrinkled skin, twisting her ring around her emaciated finger. The thought left my head after being said and I moved on to wooden rings, which were becoming my favorite. I was actually taking to the idea of rings. Everything I was learning was lodging in my heart, finding a way to actualize the tradition.

My husband-to-be must have known since the moment I mentioned it that he would seek Grandma’s ring. I’m ashamed, for such an intuitive person, at my ignorance. He’d called Mom, she’s contacted my aunt, they’d gone over to Grandpa’s to find the ring in an old jewelry box, where it had been sitting for years. Now I, naive and never wanting to wear a ring at all, am wearing my Grandmother’s wedding ring during my engagement. A ring she wore for over 50 years of marriage to my now-sick grandpa.

In that, there is value. In this ring there is history and storytelling. There are two little rubies and a single-cut diamond framing the main stone. There is an illusion setting, popular decades ago to make a smaller diamond look bigger than it actually is. The diamond was important to Grandma. Without Grandpa even knowing, she had her ring reset years into their marriage with the diamond from her mother’s wedding ring because that diamond was bigger! That story, told to me in a joint format by my mother and aunt, makes me laugh. That’s my Gram. She would.

All of this life is on my finger. It tells the world how Brad asked me to be his wife. And how in history there is value. Life is so much more than frugality. And symbols aren’t empty if you fill them.

the clues [2/5]

Tags

Berghoff, Buckingham Fountain, Chicago, clues, downtown, engagement, friends, future, Grant Park, Lake Michigan, love, marriage, new york, proposal, relationship, scavenger hunt, surprise, the Loop, travel

the waiting [1/5]

Steve dropped me off at the zoo and handed me a letter from Brad. I recognized his penmanship on the envelope. And the way he spells my name, with two e’s. The zoo was one of our places in the years we shared in Chicago. Steve sent me to the bench, and though he didn’t know where that was, I did. The bench is on Fullerton, west of Cannon, next to a bike path. Unassuming, actually crumbling, splintering at each end. It’s where I waited for Brad to meet me the day we split up, well over two years ago. It’s where Brad sat long after I walked away, unwillingly, thinking it best. I sat on the bench this time, waiting, as my letter instructed me to do, for the next clue.

Would a jogger drop a package with a tag screaming my name? Would a bus pull up with signs affixed to all the windows? I started to feel like someone was watching me. Like there were henchmen in the bushes who knew I was at the bench. Walkie talkies all over Chicago were crackling, Subject is at the bench. Please proceed with clue. Just as my curiosity piqued, my phone started vibrating out of control, asking all sorts of incriminating questions.

Do you remember… when you used to send Brad messages during work from that one computer? —where you first met Brad? —where is the best place in Chicago to get schnitzel? All clues were pointing to the Berghoff, the restaurant where Brad and I met one another. Industry shifts amidst which we fell in love. A few more messages from my dear friends buzzed in, Go there now, pal! There was a twenty for cab fare in the envelope. Brad must have known I would try, frugally, to take a bus.

I stood outside the Berghoff for a while. I didn’t exactly leave this place of employment all candy and roses, a going away party with streamers and balloons falling from the rafters. A blind man climbed out of a cab right in front of the Berghoff marquee. Maybe he has my clue, I thought.

Finally, I ducked inside, slid comfortably into the corner where I learned a large percentage of what I now know about Bradley. Behind that lunch counter computer I cleverly, coyly, sent blinking, unordered tables in paragraphs to my bartender years ago when we shared everything in this city. There was a note slid under the monitor with my name on the front in familiar penmanship. I was out the door with the clue and a bit of Spanish dialogue.

I walked down Adams, turned at Michigan to head into Grant Park, where our stage was on the corner. We used to play a graffiti game in the city. Wrote couplets, little lyric lines that we penned on sticky labels and stuck to newspaper boxes, light posts, parking meters, following riddle-directions to one another’s words. We have fun. The last graffiti was on this stage. A simple summer outdoor amphitheatre. I found the graffiti in the winter, something like “Every song I sing ees for you.” Two e’s, like the way he writes my name. It was so perfect, my musician. But things weren’t working right then, so it felt so bittersweet. This empty stage, winter snow, standing alone, the words his heart meant, all the time we’d spent.

I wasn’t sure how many clues there would be. Brad was somewhere in this city. One of the clues would hold him in its palm. Maybe it would be this stage. It was supposed to be, I find, but this weekend there was Bluesfest in Grant Park. Brad sent a message, a picture of Buckingham Fountain, down the street. Change of plans, go here instead.

I walked up slowly to the fountain. I thought he was near, wasn’t sure whether to look for him or for another clue. When he slid in next to me on the rail, he startled me so that I gasped. The seconds moved in fast-forward, crawling over one another to happen next. They’d been waiting for this for years, too.

Linda, will you be my wife? from down on one knee.

All brides-to-be everywhere, don’t be ashamed on behalf of me. I don’t actually remember what I said. Yes, of course, only yours. I’ve wanted to be your wife for years. I’m confident that right now, today, this Fall, it’s right and healthy and perfect. I want to spend “the next forty years” with you. I could have said any of that. My heart was spilling over with all of it.

Whatever I said made people clap.  A man took a picture. In the end, it would only be a few short months until we would be the Dennisons.

the waiting [1/5]

Tags

breakfast, Chicago, clues, downtown, engagement, friends, future, love, marriage, new york, proposal, relationship, scavenger hunt, surprise, travel

We have a friend, Christina. We call her Migsy. And, in a sense, from my end, the plot begins with her. It begins back when I had not yet met her in February, when her name stuck in my head as Brad told stories from work. I contacted her, on blind faith, and commissioned her to help me when I surprised Brad with a visit. I liked her immediately. She’s charismatic and charming. Has a reality about her that I was sure would suffocate in a place like Manhattan. Migsy breathes genuine life into an overstimulated city. I can get down with that.

So when she said she was coming to visit me as soon as I moved back to Chicago, my excitement was overflowing. Sticky root beer float all over my knuckles when the ice cream drops in and the glass lip takes to napping. Brimming over.

The morning of Migsy’s arrival, I waited at The West Egg, a breakfast spot in River North near the lakefront. Downtown Chicago. It’s right around the corner from where a friend of mine used to live, where she once saw Kevin Costner eating a tomato. Or something. My eyebrows were raised, my head on a swivel, waiting for Migsy to saunter around the corner, her head high, cheekbones glistening, smiling.

I put our name in, sent her a text message. She was coming, she said. The sweet hostess sat me at a two top, awaiting Migsy. I sent her another message and sipped a cup of coffee with sugar in the raw. Waited just a bit. My heart was filled with excitement and although I had suspected this weekend as a plot of sorts before, while I waited at The West Egg on the eleventh of June, I really thought Migsy was going to walk through that door.

Across the restaurant, instead, was Steve, Brad’s roommate while he lived in Chicago, and dear friend, proofed by incriminating pictures which may or may not include Looney Tunes sweatshirts and suspenders meant for men over sixty. What are friends for? Momentarily, I thought it coincidence, us all having chosen the same restaurant for breakfast on this particular Saturday, as I waited, still, for Migsy’s arrival.

But then, after I stood to give Steve a hug, he sat down at my table with me. In Migsy’s seat, which was odd. Something wasn’t normal.

Steve said Migsy wasn’t coming. And that I should come with him. He didn’t know that, for once, I had already decided what to order. With Brad, it usually takes me dozens of minutes. With my friend Charissa, nothing short of an hour. Instead, I left with Steve. But not after an accusatory, if prideful declaration.

Brad’s here, isn’t he? From New York City. He must have flown when I thought he was at work. Steve’s eyes avoided contact with mine. He laughed. Never answered. My thoughts were in fast forward. This is it! I could hardly wait to see him.

Engagement Announcement

Tags

change, engagement, friends, future, God, love, marriage, proposal, relationship

In the picture, they’re dressed nice,
both in black sweaters, she in tights.

Frosted with glass, there are cupboards behind,
Mom and Dad’s kitchen—Iowa—both families intertwined.

We all met in seminary, intermingled with one another
She fell so gently, his steps so slow, so measured toward her.

I, so impatient, watching them come together
But now, it’s too soon, knowing they’ll spend forever.

Talking Talking Talking

Tags

betrothed, bride, change, engagement, feeling, friends, girlfriends, groom, growth, husband, love, marriage, respect, wedding, wife

I remember sitting in the kitchen, when Anne used to live in The Atrium, that old apartment complex where I could never get in without jumping the fence or following the neighbors inside like a stalker. Sitting at the kitchen table with Josi and Rachel, with her roommate Alayna, in front of my syrupy breakfast plate, talking, talking, talking. I was being intentional, taking that trip into the city to hang out with my girls and some days, I was so sick of talking and talking about James. I was selfish. I am. There were days we talked until there was nothing left to talk about. And even hours and minutes beyond.

I remember: I didn’t want to talk about him anymore. The syrup hardened to my plate and the edges of my heart hardened in their selfish ways. But it needed to be talked out. We needed to explore the emotions, the mental complications, the way it all felt. For Anne. For us all. It’s exactly what I’m expecting them to do for me. What is , some days, lacking. Where the Body is not always perfect. Where we remember that we are, in fact, human. Unfortunately.

And it was then, I realize, that I did not yet love him like I should have. I didn’t love him then. I didn’t love Annie’s fiancé during all that talking talking talking. I do now, but I didn’t then. It’s been a slow process for me to understand how he loves and cares for Anne in the lifetime-together kind of way. He does, I know that now.

They’ll be married soon. This is real. Name-change, move to Indiana kind of real. When Anne told me, I felt the joy spilling over and out of me. My feet were socked and curled up in my driver’s seat, the pedals driving themselves. I was squealing like I don’t usually, sounding like a girl. Sounding like a little girl because I love him now. And I want him to be the head of her, her husband, her leader. I want him to have her.

Betrothed was a definition that my middle schoolers needed to remember a few weeks ago. Many of them made a mistake and thought it meant “rejected”. Which is so far off. So far from the promise and commitment and lifetime sense of stay that betrothal elicits. Come May, they will be betrothed. And, I’m alright with that.

Montrose, On Pause

Tags

beach, Chicago, dating, engagement, friends, friendship, love, marriage, pause, play, proposal, relationship, summer, unity

It was windy, about to rain, but still we walked towards the beach off Montrose Avenue, on the North end of this big city. The lake was restless, whitecapping toward the shore as we came to the top of the sandbar. We, me and the man who just might be swiftly stealing my heart, thought it would be a good day to sit on a blanket at the beach. It was not, in fact, a good day to sit on the beach, blanket or otherwise.

Nate asked Jamie Sarah Rollins to marry him at this beach. Just like that, too. Jamie Sarah Rollins, will you marry me? They had history tied to this beach and as they walked, Nate told Jamie of all the times he’d come here. Through all the starting and ending of the “us” in them, Nate crying out to a God he hoped was listening about a woman he loved dearly. Montrose was here for all of that. Then after history was made, they had a picnic here on an early summer day and penciled in the day when they would start their lives together in the one-flesh sort of way.

Jamie is a friend of mine. A new friend, the kind to try and keep around, even if only for soy cafe mistos every other Tuesday. Even to teach her how to be a pen pal across thousand-mile gaps because she says she’s no good at writing letters. I don’t know what makes me so sure of this, but I know.

Nate is her boy-fr―. Fiancé, Nate is her fiancé. He knows a girl I know. He lives with a guy I like. He washes windows, even when it rains. He washed Jamie’s feet and prayed over the two of them on that beach while she cried about spending her life with him and I thought all of that was pretty special, which is to Nate’s credit.

And all of this happened on a beach in a big city. The wind wasn’t blowing out of control; the waves were calm and expectant, waiting for Nate; the runners paused their running, the bikers took a different route. All so Nate could crouch down on one knee and look up at the woman who will, in seventy-three days, be his wife and watch her say yes.