“…Ever After…”

Concluding our Coast-to-Coast-to-Coast Romance in 3 Acts

Pity the poor person having to knock on our door at the Curtis House the morning after our wedding.

The knock on our door startled us out of our post-nuptial bliss. We hardly expected visitors, so we did not respond at first. The knock came again, a little louder and stronger, along with a voice. “Excuse me,” he said, “An urgent phone call from Mrs. Perreault?”

Sara rolled her eyes, dressed, and went to field the call at the phone downstairs. She was back momentarily explaining the crisis behind our Curtis interruptus: my family had just missed the bus to the airport. There was still time to chase it down and catch it at one of the stops down the road, but Ginny couldn’t leave Harve alone that long.

So Sara & I set off to taxi my family down the highway in hopes of catching their bus to catch their flight home to Texas. The only problem: fitting 6 adults (none small) into a Toyota sedan. I don’t recall the exact configuration, but I drove, hogging the only comfortable seat in the car, and I recall Sara had to squeeze onto Joanie’s lap as as part of the back seat “sardines.”

Sailing down the highway, we did indeed manage to catch up to the bus. As their bags were loaded and tickets handed over to the driver, he looked up and saw Scott standing beside me. Noting the undeniable resemblance, he asked drily,  “Brothers, right?”

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Our Houston Reception

Well, we all made it back to Texas, but we’d had so much fun, we couldn’t stop now. With the wedding up in Connecticut, none of my extended family or Texas friends had been able to attend.

So, my folks threw us a reception in Houston to celebrate Texas-style — and, I suspect, to show off their son’s good taste. We took the occasion to dress up again — after all, why wear your wedding clothes only once?

Still, none of my work cohorts in Austin came to either the wedding or the Houston event, so we decided to hold an Austin “re-enactment” as well. Plus we wanted a housewarming also.

Before we got married, Sara had insisted we move out of my long-time bachelor house as soon as we got back to Texas, telling me, “I’m scared to go into your kitchen after dark.” I’d found and rented a place in our week apart, so, by February, we had moved to our newer home just a couple of blocks away.

Austin reenactment with Susan Bright, our “un-officiant”

We had arranged for my friend Donal, the chaplain at work, to “officiate” at this re-enactment. Except Donal forgot all about us that day, being newly remarried himself, so as more and more people gathered, we wondered what to do.

Once it became obvious we had no one to conduct the planned ceremony, our friend, Susan Bright, the poet, offered us a beautiful blessing to seal the deal one more time.

And it seems to have worked. Here we are 26 years in on the “ever after,” happily. Our life together has been filled with happiness — and sorrow and joy and pain and struggle and victory and loss and endurance.

See, they almost get it right in the traditional wedding vows, but they miss an important point: it’s not “or” in those phrases— it’s “and.”

For better AND worse.
For richer AND poorer.
In sickness AND in health.

And we wouldn’t have it any other way.