This was in marked contrast to my first trip through. Much like this time, I had friends and a wedding party gathered together from all over the eastern seaboard. Then, however, I had agreed to a bachelor party the night before the wedding, and got totally trashed. I was impossibly hungover the next day, and Marilyn never let me forget it! I was sober, but looked and felt like low grade garbage. Not this time, no way, no how!
The rehearsal went smoothly. I had let Marilyn pick the flower girl and ring bearer from her family, since nobody on my side was that young, not even my cousins. Peter was going to be the ring bearer and one of her cousins was going to be the flower girl. Afterwards we had dinner over at a steak house in the Sangertown Square mall. The only awkward part, to me at least, was when I caught Mom explaining my brother couldn't be there because he wasn't feeling well. When Marilyn's parents asked what was wrong they heard me mutter, "Clinical insanity." Mom wasn't amused and Marilyn's parents looked mystified, and I just said he was tied up ("in a straight jacket!", I whispered to Marilyn) and wasn't able to come. I vowed to keep quiet, especially after Marilyn poked me in the arm.
Otherwise things went smoothly. As soon as Suzie learned that Anna Lee was a nurse, she plopped herself down next to her new best friend and started peppering her with questions about nursing school and being a nurse. Suzie had just turned 17 and was a senior at Towson High, with plans to go to nursing school when she graduated. She was planning on getting both a degree in nursing and her RN certification, which always surprised me, since I never really understood they aren't one and the same. Anna Lee took it all in with good grace, having a fresh and eager face to talk to about nursing.
Suzie would be a good nurse. She ended up going to Delaware the first trip through, and they threw them in the deep end right at the start. On her first ambulance ride-along, two weeks into her first semester, they went roaring off to the home of an elderly husband and wife. The husband had a heart attack and died while Suzie was watching. It only got worse. The wife, seeing her husband die, immediately stroked out, and dropped to the floor in front of my sister. They transported her but she never woke up. Two dead on her very first ambulance call! If that didn't scare her off, nothing would. She ended up in orthopedics at Johns Hopkins, and used to tell us the funniest stories!
My father even paid for the rehearsal dinner. He grumbled slightly to Mom, but kept it quiet. Big Bob's and Harriet's family of 13 kids was more than he had originally budgeted for, which was practically nothing. He hadn't even rented a tux for the wedding. I wondered what his wedding present to us would be. On the first trip around, it turned out that he had been keeping track of all the money he had given to me since I went to college, like the $20 he once slipped me, or the $50 he once let me have to make a year's expenses. He totaled up the costs to $600 and told Marilyn and me he was cancelling my debt to him. That was our wedding present. At least this time I didn't owe him any money.
Suzie, on the other hand, got a $25,000 wedding when she got married, complete to 300 guests at the Engineer's Club in Baltimore and a nine piece band. We also got to see my mother lit up like a Christmas tree leading the conga line. I thought that kind of made it worthwhile. By then, of course, I had completely remade my life hundreds of miles away from my family, so I just didn't care about the discrepancy in treatment. Marilyn, however, felt the snub terribly. Her parents gave us a honeymoon cruise as a wedding present, and mine cancelled a debt we didn't even know we owed.
Big Bob and Harriet wanted to give us a cruise again, but since I had already arranged our honeymoon cruise, they switched it to a trip to Hawaii sometime within the next year. I told Marilyn and them that we would go sometime during the winter, when I had built up some more leave and we had another support cycle. They really didn't understand about building up leave and the cycle and how it worked. To be fair neither did Marilyn, and I suspected she wasn't going to enjoy parts of it.
After the rehearsal dinner, Marilyn and I snuck out to the parking lot with Tammy and I tossed her suitcase into Tammy's car. I got a very nice hug and smooch from my sweetie. She also laughed and said, "Thanks for treating my nerves!"
I just grinned at her. "Hey, I'm a doctor! I specialize in treating women's nervous conditions."
Tammy laughed at that. "Does that mean you'd treat me if I got nervous?"
Marilyn tried to give her friend and maid of honor a playful push, but I still had her in my arms. "Forget about it! Besides, he's not that type of doctor."
"I don't know, babe. A doctor is a doctor is a doctor...", I commented.
She wrapped herself around me possessively. "Yeah? Well, you're my doctor now, so nobody else gets any treatments!"
"Okay, but you'd better be pretty nervous, 'cause I'd hate to let these talents go to waste."
She shrieked in laughter at that, and then gave me a good-night kiss. She and Tammy roared out of the parking lot with a squeal to the tires. Tammy wasn't any better a driver than Marilyn. Hopefully they would survive until the morning.
Tusker and Tessa drove back to the Sheraton in their car, and I rode with Harlan and Anna Lee and Joe. As we climbed in, I commented, "I wonder if we can run over to Toys R Us and pick up a car seat for the baby? She looks like Mount Vesuvius getting ready to blow!"
Harlan laughed, but Anna Lee agreed with me. "Hey, I work obstetrics, and I think the doctor got the dates wrong. There is no way she has another month to go. She looks like the baby has already dropped, and not just yesterday, either!"
We made a side trip over to Commercial Drive and bought a car seat and a big carton of newborn diapers. Even if she didn't need them right away, she was going to need them soon enough! Joe picked up a few bibs and onesies for the baby. He and Harlan would make sure they got them after Marilyn and I took off. We also picked up some wrapping paper, and some tape and scissors. Back at the Sheraton, we took everything up to my room, had a wrapping party, and had a few beers.
But that was it for the excitement. I needed to get some sleep (Marilyn's nervous condition had precluded much sleep for the last couple of days.) Saturday the wedding would be at 1100, so I needed to be at the church an hour before that. The limo was to pick up me and my groomsmen at the Sheraton by 0945 and drive us over. Anna Lee was going to drive over with Tessa about half an hour or so later.
Have you ever seen the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding? Remember the overhead shot of the Greek church, where the bride's side of the church is filled to overflowing, and the groom's side barely has a few pews seated? Marilyn and I used to call that our big fat upstate wedding. It was just about like that. We had about 150 people at the wedding. Roughly 120-130 were from her family. Every aunt and uncle and cousin from Plattsburgh and beyond showed up. It was the biggest collection of shitkickers and hillbillies since the movie Deliverance was filmed. I just whispered to Harlan, Joe, and Tusker that if anybody started asking if they could squeal like a pig, to just start running!
My side was a lot smaller. We just had my family, less Ham, and Suzie was in the wedding, so it was just my parents in the pew. Also, Aunt Nan and her family of five, total, and Aunt Peg and her family of three, total. My grandfather was now in a nursing home getting ready to die in the fall. Before he died just a few days after the wedding, and they didn't tell us until we got home. Also on my side were about a dozen friends and their girlfriends or wives, mostly from college, along with Professor Rhineburg and his wife. Marilyn had a few friends from high school, as well.