Eighteen Months
We married early in the morning.
We’d waited so long. We wanted to be married that day, not fritter it in hazy preparation.
And anyway, I was never one for elaborate hair-dos and make-up.
We rose early, in the quiet of a sleepy lakefront village. All the tourists had gone home for the season.
He zipped my dress in the grey morning twilight, I straightened his tie. There was no one else in the world for a minute.
We chose this town because the beach was beautiful, public and free to use. We didn’t know until later my grandfather had loved it here.
We didn’t know either how chilly it would be on a September morning. We all shivered in our fancy clothes, my dress obscured by a jacket I was too cold to discard.
My father-in-law thought a bride in a leather bomber was a hoot and a half.
We’d timed it so the place would be empty but misjudged when the sun would crest the dunes. It appeared from beneath the treeline after we exchanged vows.
The entire affair was small. Twelve guests and an old friend-turned-photographer. We put everyone up in a cozy B&B the night before. An immense extravagance courtesy of the recent inheritance from my grandmother. They’d come so far and we’d made them get up so early.
It was special, too, to all be under one roof just this once. And for Bonmama to have had a hand in it.
Afterward we had brunch and champagne in a tapestry dining room. We read out loud a short story we love. It was nicer in wingchairs with pecan rolls than on a chilly beach.
It wasn’t yet lunch when we hit the road after a million hugs. Impatient to strike out but loathe to leave.
We pulled off the dusty sunny byway for gas before we left town. We were both fritzy and jubilant to distraction. He pumped in two gallons of diesel before we realized what was what.
We laughed nervously.
Glad we were in it together. Uncertain what would happen next.
.
Que Sera Sara? 
Happy 18 months! It was a beautiful morning!
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