This Is Us
Sunday the 30th will mark thirty-four years of marriage for us. That’s right, thirty-four. Of our wedding pictures, I’ve long loved this one for two reasons. Well, more than two, but I mention two here. First, would you just look at those smooth faces, untested, untried, girlish and boyish, faces of promise as Stafford wrote places where the scars will be. That’s how you (usually) start out in marriage—just kids.
The other reason I love this picture is that we’re not looking at each other. Oh, trust me, we’ve got plenty where we’re gazing into each other’s eyes, Meredith all lovey-dovey and me all lusty-lovey. But this one is not that. The photographer caught us looking out into the rest of our lives. That hot June afternoon we probably couldn’t see much beyond the church window, but out there in that future would be moves to Texas and then back to Arkansas and then one fine day to Colorado, there would be a son and then a daughter right on his heels and then after a brief hiatus another daughter to make the Blase5, there would be birthdays and Christmases and trips to see grandparents and trips to see the mountains and the ocean white with foam even a trip to Italy, there would be days of beauty and magic and days of desolation and heartbreak, graduations and confirmations, and the gift of a dark and holy wonder named Jack the Beagle…gosh, I could go on and on, all that just waiting outside that church window being looked through by kids, just kids. And though we couldn’t see it all, there it was for the taking and the making—a grand vision, and all we had to do was agree. So we each said I do, and we saddled up and rode off into our lives together, into as E.B White wrote this lovely world, these precious days…