Anniversary

18 this morning, partly cloudy and cold all day, never getting above 27. Tonight is forecast to be in the single digits.

I am thinking tonight of my mother and father. I am imagining them on this night, 77 years ago, in cold, snowy Cambridgeshire, England. 

I know it was cold and snowing because my mother told me. This, you see, would have been the night before her wedding. I am thinking about how it must have been that night for her and for her mother and sisters. Imagine them, in war-stricken England, finding all the things needed for a wedding. A dress. Something borrowed, something blue, something old, something new. What were those things, I wonder? 

The wedding photos were apparently taken several months after the wedding, judging by all the greenery

I cannot remember if her dress was new, or made for the occasion, or was it made over from someone else's dress? I know it was soft, soft satin of a kind we don't see today, with long sleeves and an elegant slim profile. Her veil? Was that borrowed? The dress came to America with her, and my sister Cathy wore it for her own wedding. I suppose Cathy still has it. I hope so.

Thinking of my Granny and her daughters in their little house built by my grandfather before he died some 15 years before this wedding night. 

                                                    Ashlyn, my mother's childhood home.

Were there blackout curtains in the windows? I do not think they had electricity yet, anyway, in that little house in the country. Were they worried about an airstrike? Or were they too busy with preparations? Did Mom stay at home that night, or did she stay somewhere in Cambridge, since the roads might be impassable in the morning?

How did my Granny feel about her youngest child marrying an American? With one daughter already wed to a Canadian, I can only imagine the worry and the pain of knowing her daughter might move an ocean away. That wasn't the plan at the time--they planned to stay in England, but somehow the plan changed. Did Granny suspect that might happen?

All these questions, now I want to know the answers but of course it's too late to find out. 

And then there's my father, at his airbase not many miles away. Did he party it up with his buddies the night before, or was he on duty? Clothes were no problem for him, the dress uniform was all he needed.

I remember my parents telling us about the day of the wedding, how it was so cold, and snow so deep no one could get to the church, The Church of our Lady and the English Martyrs. Mom had converted to Catholicism to marry Dad. At the wedding, there were only the priest, the bride and groom, and two witnesses. No wedding dinner, just Orange Crush soda and Clark candy bars--which were served at their 50th wedding anniversary too. 

50 years later, and still so much in love.

So tonight I am trying to go back in time, to the night before the wedding, to the tiny village of Caldecote, to a time when people married because who knew if there would be a future, to a time of danger, suspense, and best of all, love. Their love lasted, despite the obstacles of war, my father's anger mother in America, despite so many children and so many hardships, for 61 years. While some of their story is lost to me, the fact of their love and commitment was the hallmark of their lives.

Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.