“Well,” I demanded, “who is he?”
“He’s such a nice boy. He’s from south Mississippi, graduated from Mississippi College, and I think—I really do think—that she’s just crazy about him,” Mama answered.
I was intrigued, so I continued with the interrogation. “What do Robin and JD think? Do they like him? Is it serious?”
“Oh, they’re crazy about him too. And I don’t know if it’s serious yet, but I think it will be.”
I had to pause for a second and process what I was hearing. In my head Mae would forever be every bit of three years old and twirling around her parents’ sunroom in a ruffled, polka-dot romper. The very notion that she could be in a potentially serious relationship ’bout near overloaded my circuitry. I snapped back to reality, though, when I realized that I’d failed to ask a very important question.
“Mama! I almost forgot! What’s his name?”
“Scoot!”
“What? You want me to scoot? Scoot where? Can’t I just walk?” I asked.
“Noooo, honey.” Mama sounded just a little bit exasperated. “I was talking about Mae’s new boyfriend. His name is Scoot.”
“His name is Scoot?”
“Yes!” At that point Mama’s tone indicated that she didn’t quite understand why I was struggling to process such a simple piece of information. “It’s Scoot! Scoot is his name! That’s what I’m telling you!”
Now, listen. I recognize that I am the product of a family that shouldn’t throw a single name-related stone. But Scoot was a new one for me. It struck me as a more memorable moniker than Sister’s friend Edna Earl (Sister called her Ed for short). It might even top a distant cousin whose name was Stellawood, but we’d have to put it to a vote to decide for sure.
It wasn’t long before Scoot was like part of our big ole extended family. Mama made sure to let me know he was “going to make a doctor”—which is Moss Rose speak for “he’s currently enrolled in medical school”—and in Mama’s book, the combination of his honorable career path, his love for the Lord, and his love for Mae catapulted him to Favored Among Men status in record time. He proposed to Mae in October, and in Myrtlewood, Mississippi, that means that within two hours of Mae saying yes, wedding plans were moving full steam ahead.
I don’t know if other small towns operate the same way, but Myrtlewood folks aren’t real big on wasting time where event planning is concerned. In fact, I’m fully convinced that the nation’s largest concentration of out-of-this-world hostesses and party givers resides within the confines of my home county. There must be a chemical in the water there that imparts extensive knowledge of table settings, floral design, and cooking for a crowd. Beats anything I’ve ever seen.
By Christmas Robin and Mae had the bulk of the wedding plans figured out. The wedding was going to be outside at Robin and JD’s home, and when Mama told me that Mae was going to get married in the backyard of the house where she’d grown up, my first question was, “So, what all is Robin going to do when she remodels her house?” I’m sure my reaction might seem odd to some people, but by the time I was ten or eleven, I’d learned that if a woman offered on a Monday to host a bridal tea, baby shower, or wedding reception, her first task on Tuesday morning was to line up a contractor. It wasn’t that she was trying to outdo anyone else; it was just that hosting a big event was the perfect opportunity to force her husband’s hand if he’d been putting off a home-improvement project.
For example.
When I was growing up, we had stone pavers leading to our front door. Those pavers were notorious for being a little on the wobbly side and tricky to navigate in heels. Nonetheless, they served as the walkway through our front yard for years. But after Mama offered to host a bridal tea for our church’s organist? Oh, those pavers were history. Within four days, Mama had scheduled a cement truck to pour her a new walkway. After all, how in the world could she risk Virginia Peterson’s heel getting caught in the grass? Or what if Barbara Riley tripped trying to step from paver to paver? Or what if Fleta Mears slid on a mossy spot and dropped her gift and the bride-to-be would never be able to serve her own guests with that cream-and-sugar set in Lenox Solitaire? That wouldn’t be very Christlike, now, would it?
So when Robin decided to tweak a few spaces around her house for the wedding, she was really just following in the footsteps of countless Mississippi women who had gone before her. With the help of a mighty fine architect and some hardworking contractors, she fine-tuned the landscaping in her yard and added a few hardscape features, which is my fancy way of telling you she had her contractor build an outdoor fireplace as well as a beautiful altar area where Mae and Scoot would say their vows. She also extended an enclosed porch that ran along the back of the house so it could accommodate more people. By the time spring gave way to summer that year, Robin and JD’s home looked like something straight out of Southern Living. It was going to be an absolutely perfect setting for a June wedding.
I spent most of Mae’s wedding week in Myrtlewood, and on the actual day of the wedding, I woke up pretty early so that Alex and I could be ready for pictures at eight. He and five of his cousins were in the wedding party, and I was counting on Brother to be able to tie the boys’ bow ties. Since I’m pretty sure you can minor in bow tying at Ole Miss, I expected Brother to be highly qualified.
The morning was muggy, with an unseasonably heavy haze hanging in the air, and when I broke into a sweat just trying to get Alex, me, and all our stuff loaded in the car at seven forty-five in the morning, I wondered how the rest of the day was going to pan out. Resolved that a little humidity wasn’t going to ruin the day, I cranked up the AC in my car, spackled a little more powder on my face, and hit the road.
Over the course of my life I’ve witnessed way more than my fair share of beautiful Southern nuptials, but I have to say my first glimpse of Robin and JD’s yard completely took my breath away. I don’t know if I’ve seen a lovelier setting for a wedding. The bride and her mother had thought of every detail, including monogrammed fans wrapped in coordinating ribbon, as well as a lemonade table at the entrance to the backyard so guests could enjoy a cool drink as they found their seats. Hydrangeas were in full bloom in the flower beds, while ceramic and stone planters overflowed with roses, caladiums, daisies, and impatiens. Tables covered in green silk dotted the periphery of the yard, and enormous glass containers of sweet tea and ice water took the place of the traditional punch bowl. JD’s classic (read: ancient) pickup truck was parked under the trees so that the truck bed, which was covered with quilts and flanked by urns of knockout roses, could accommodate a homemade ice cream buffet after the ceremony.
If love is in the details—well, the world could barely contain all the love at Robin and JD’s house that morning.
By eight thirty, picture taking was going full force, and I noticed that the sun felt unusually, um, aggressive for that time of the day. Paige and I focused on keeping the kids happy and well hydrated, and by nine o’clock the musicians—including a full gospel choir—had taken their places in the shade and started to warm up. Around nine fifteen I decided to take a quick stroll, mainly to soak in the sight of all those flowers one more time, but the sun was so relentless that I lasted for two whole minutes before I hightailed it back inside. I filled up a Solo cup with ice water faster than you can say, “High potential for dangerous UV rays,” and I braced myself for what was shaping up to be a humdinger of a scorcher.
Regardless of what was going on with the heat index (my conservative estimation: 162 degrees), the bride was cool as a cucumber. She looked the way every girl dreams of looking on her wedding day: elegant, happy, and serene. Paige’s three-year-old was mopping sweat off his forehead after picture time, mind you, but not Mae. She glowed, but she never glistened. I know with everything in me that if I had married under the same weather conditions, someone would have had to follow me around with an assortment of towels, a vat of loose powder, and a block of ice, but Mae required none of the above. Inex
plicably, she was not sweating at all. And as I lifted my hair off my neck and looked around for the ministry of the nearest air-conditioning vent, I tried my best not to resent her for that.
A quick preceremony survey of the backyard revealed that there wasn’t a folding chair to spare at T minus 15 minutes, and a couple of hundred people were standing in a semicircle in the area behind the chairs. My sister-in-law Janie and I claimed a couple of patio chairs next to the outdoor fireplace, mainly because we felt it was wise to be near our boys when they lined up for the processional. We expected that they’d behave, but we figured proximity would be to our advantage, especially in the event that a well-timed “STOP THAT. STOP THAT RIGHT NOW” glare proved necessary.
The children were definitely fidgety, but they did remarkably well considering the stifling humidity. Most of the men in attendance had abandoned their coats and loosened their ties; the backs of their shirts looked like damp pastel dartboards. The ribbon-covered fans were getting a workout, but unfortunately it’s difficult to create a breeze when you’re in the dead center of a stifling heat vortex. Janie and I fanned ourselves like we were getting paid for it and thanked the good Lord the sun was tucked behind a pretty large cloud cover. Because that cloud cover? Well, it was pretty much the only thing standing between us and a heatstroke.
A few minutes after ten, someone opened the French doors that led to the patio, and Mae floated down the steps with Robin on one side and JD on the other. I’ve never been big on princesses and fairy tales and the like, but even I’ll admit that the only thing missing on Mae’s wedding day was a glass slipper and a carriage. She was stunning. And as she walked down the aisle with her head held high and her hand resting on her daddy’s arm, the sun peeked from behind the clouds and followed her like a spotlight. It was like the Lord Himself was shining on Mae and Scoot as they prepared to say their vows and spend the rest of their lives together.
I dabbed the edges of my forehead in a futile attempt to keep the sweat from running down my face, and as the minister was about to lead all of us in prayer, I bowed my head a few seconds early and offered up a prayer of my own: Lord, it’s real sweet and all that You made the sun very literally shine on them on their wedding day. You really do think of everything. But if You could tuck that sun back behind those clouds for the rest of the ceremony, I’d be sixteen kinds of grateful. Because it would make this day extra special if I didn’t have to fight off a bout of the sun poisoning. In Jesus’ name.
See, here’s the thing. On any given day, I can easily rattle off a list of the Top Ten Most Blazing Hot Moments of My Life. When I was a freshman in college, there was an unfortunate encounter with a tanning bed that left me stretched across the tile floor of my dorm bathroom with an inch-thick coating of Noxzema all over my stomach and legs. In the early ’90s there was a trip to New Orleans for my friend Elise’s bachelorette party, and the air was so stale and thick and steamy that I nearly had to seek counseling in order to overcome my heat-related resentment. Just recently there was a sweltering canoe ride in Ecuador that culminated with a climb up a fairly intimidating number of steps and the sobering realization that the nearest breeze was obviously trapped somewhere along the southern coast of Chile.
So when that sun came out—and stayed out, I might add—at Mae’s wedding, it got my attention, and fast. It was blazing. Epic. Brutal. Right up there on my HOTTEST MOMENTS EVER list, sandwiched somewhere between Elise’s bachelorette party and the Ecuadorian jungle. That sun showed up with some authority.
Janie and I tried our best to be gamers as we continued to fan ourselves at a pace that would impress the most hyperactive dragonfly, but when I started to feel my scalp burn, I very discreetly stood up from my wrought-iron chair, pulled my dress away from the backs of my legs, then ever so slowly tiptoed to the back door. I gently turned the knob as I pushed on the side panel, and the blast of cold air that hit me straight in the face prompted a spontaneous outpouring of thanksgiving and praise. I’ve spent most of my life steeped in a deeply traditional Protestant church culture, but that day? When my sizzling scalp and I encountered the sweet relief of an indoor environment where the thermostat was set to a brisk sixty-two degrees? I may have spoken in tongues.
Unfortunately, the heat outside got worse before it got better. Brother and I ended up watching the ceremony through a den window, and Brother took it upon himself to serve as my personal wedding commentator for the remainder of the festivities.
“We’ve got a lady in yellow who’s down for the count on the back row,” he’d say, and sure enough, the lady in yellow would stand up and make her way inside.
“I don’t think Robin’s cousin from Charlotte is going to be able to take much more,” he’d predict, and within minutes we’d hear a hearty “WHEWWWWWW” as the cousin walked in the back door and made a beeline for a glass of ice water.
The commentating highlight of the day was when Brother gestured to the right side of the yard and said, “Hey, look over there. I’m pretty sure one of the people in the choir just vomited.”
I didn’t believe him at first, but his play-by-play skills were dead on. After some friends helped the choir member inside and she cooled down a little, she was as good as new, but the heat was definitely taking a toll. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that people were dropping like flies, but I would say they were beginning to drop like widely spaced dominoes.
The bride, however, remained perfectly radiant. And once she and Scoot were pronounced husband and wife, the collective sum of their happiness rendered the heat all but meaningless. The pastor said the benediction, which meant everyone was free and clear to put the smackdown on some iced tea. I saw some of the most refined women I have ever known slam their glasses of iced tea like they were fraternity boys playing a heated game of beer pong, and the ladies who were really living on the edge followed up that glass of iced tea with a glass of fresh lemonade. SOUTHERN WOMEN GONE WILD.
During the reception my little family and I found a spot underneath a great big pine tree, and Alex quickly untucked his shirt and removed his bow tie while his daddy fixed them a couple of plates of food. The menu of honey-glazed pork tenderloin, green beans, sweet potato fries, fried chicken, and cheese grits was enough to make Paula Deen weep with joy, and as the little man dug into his “deeeee-licious” plate of cheese grits, I spotted Martha, who was stylishly sporting a long-sleeved black jacket in the aforementioned 162-degree heat. She looked like she had just stepped away from the Estée Lauder counter (after a quick stop by the beauty parlor to get her hair shampooed and styled, of course), and as I tucked my lifeless, humidity-riddled hair behind my ears and wiped the sweat from my nose, I may have harbored some significant resentment toward my mother-in-law in that moment. She looked fresh as a daisy, and I looked like I’d thrown on a dress in the car after finishing the ten-to-four shift on the highway repaving crew.
NOT THAT I WAS BITTER.
After I’d made my peace with the fact that I looked like I’d run a half marathon even though I’d just been, you know, standing, I very deliberately let my eyes wander around the whole expanse of the yard. I looked to my right and saw my third grade teacher and her beautiful daughter, who’d recently gotten engaged. Straight ahead my cousin Benji was laughing like crazy with his two daughters. Mama’s cousins Jean and Judy were standing to my left, talking and carrying on with Alex, and as I turned around, I caught a glimpse of Bart helping a lady to her car way off in the distance. Mama, who was rivaling Martha in the “Oh, is it hot? I hadn’t noticed” department, was right behind me, telling Robin’s mother what a glorious morning it had been. And then, as I turned back to my original position, I spotted Chox with Minnie, her dear friend of more than forty years, standing at the edge of the driveway, no doubt making supper plans for later that night.
It was several minutes before I was able to mentally assemble the puzzle pieces of what I’d just seen, but eventually it dawned on me: I was surrounded on all sides by people I’d known an
d loved for years. Maybe that doesn’t resonate with you the way it resonates with me, but even now it’s a powerful visual reminder—at least to me—that God doesn’t just touch down in our lives for short periods of time and then take off when He’s ready for a new adventure. He sets up camp. Puts up fences. Establishes boundary lines in pleasant places. And then He surrounds us with people who do their very best to make sure we don’t wander too far from the fold.
Standing in Robin and JD’s yard, I was reminded of all those days when I babysat Bart and Mae, those times when I went through the churchy motions but struggled to articulate what I believed, much less why I believed it. I had wondered if I’d ever get married, if I’d ever want to be a mama, if I’d ever feel comfortable in my own skin. And as I stood in front of the house where I’d wrestled with so much internal questioning in my late teens and early twenties, I grinned just a little bit and thought, Well, my word. What a difference twenty years makes. I’m surrounded by the same people, but by the grace of God, I have a completely different perspective.
I don’t know. It’s weird. But sometimes the Lord has to take us back to a place we’ve been so He can remind us just how far we’ve come.
There’s a passage in the Psalms I absolutely love—I’m convinced it will resonate way down deep in my heart as long as I live. And if there were some way the forty-two-year-old version of me could travel back in time, sit down, and visit with twenty-two-year-old me, I would hand that twenty-two-year-old a little slip of paper with Psalm 107:4-8 printed on it. Well, first I would tell her to wash her face every single night and moisturize like crazy even though she can’t fathom a day when her pores will be visible. But after we’d addressed skin-care issues, I’d read her these verses:
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