November 27, 2012

• In the spring of 1988 my best friend eloped.  

  Her boyfriend was in the Navy and there was something about getting health insurance or some other benefits, or maybe being married protecting him from a transfer somewhere.  I don’t remember the details, but it was related to the bureaucracy of the military. 

  They were already living together (I think?), so they would get married and THEN tell only their parents, and then have time to plan a real wedding in the fall. 

  Funny, 10 years later my sister did the same thing – got officially secretly married and then had a wedding several months later.  Do people do this quite often?  Anyway, in my sister’s case, it was not the military but rather the need to live together abroad that pushed up the wedding date. And it was somewhat awkward (but totally legit!) that she was several months pregnant by the time of the actual wedding.  Do people still worry about such issues of timing? 

   

  Anyway, back to 1988…  Michele, my best friend from high school, was eloping with her Navy boyfriend and David and I were invited to come along as witnesses.  This event was to take place on a Sunday morning and what I remember most was that I was afraid to tell my mother that I was not going to church. David and I had been dating for about a year and a half. I was 19 years old and working full-time but living at home, with my parents and younger siblings. And I was deathly afraid of my mother.  

  David had spent the previous night at our house. He often did this because he lived (at home, with his parents and younger brother) nearly an hour away and we pleaded with my mother not to send him home, late at night, on his motorcycle, on the dark highways, with all the drunks & crazies out there!, after our Saturday night dates.  I mostly saw him only on weekends due the distance between our homes and our work and school schedules.  So my very conservative Christian mother was forced by guilt into letting her daughter’s very non-Christian (Jewish atheist, actually) boyfriend stay overnight.  And – get this! – he was allowed to sleep on the “floor” of my bedroom.  As long as the door stayed open…  You can guess how this went down.  Either my mother trusted me and was extremely naive, or she was completely aware of the circumstances and chose to have us safe in her house and attending church than elsewhere, especially if elsewhere was me staying over at his house, where she couldn’t keep an eye on us. I hope it was the latter, but I’m still not 100% sure. 

  Anyway, back to the Sunday morning elopement.  David was there and we woke and got dressed just as my mother and brother and sister were dressing for church (my stepfather never attended).  We prepared to walk out the door and I dropped the bomb.  

  “Actually, we’re not going to church.”  (David regularly attended with us. Perhaps this was the silently agreed upon fair exchange between my mother and him – you can sleep on her bedroom floor, but you’re going to church with us the next day.) 

  “Where are you going, then?” My mother asked.  In my memory, she was physically blocking us from walking out the front door.  But my memory may not be reliable. 

  “We’re going to breakfast with Jon and Michele.”  Gulp. A stand-off.  I was lying. Sort of. Only halfway, actually. My mother glared. She wasn’t going to let us off this easy. 

  “You’re going to church.” 

  “We can’t, we promised, it’s a special occasion.” 

  “What’s the occasion?” 

  Something-Jon-the Navy-something-he might be going away – a goodbye breakfast, yes that must be it – have to drive to San Diego – I’m lying – she knows it – David is silent – it’s not his friend, not his mother – he’s caught in the middle – she’s not budging. 

  “That is no reason to miss church. I’m surprised at Michele.” 

  It’s true – Michele was as serious a Christian as my mother, though she attended a different church.  My  mom knew something was fishy. I should have told her we were going to church with Michele! Why didn’t I think it through, have a plan? 

  My mother was still standing, arms crossed. There was no reason to miss church, unless you were deathly ill. I don’t think I’d ever missed church and she was NOT about to let me start missing it to hang out with friends, or with David.  She probably thought it had nothing to do with Michele and that David and I were just trying to get out alone. She wasn’t going to let us start down this dangerous path of no church on Sundays.

  We were going to be late to the marriage ceremony. They were counting on us. So I finally gave in. I told her that Jon and Michele were getting married, but NO ONE knows, so don’t tell her mom! I explained about the health insurance – or the transfer – and how they were going to have a wedding in October and they needed us as witnesses!  But don’t tell anyone. 

  And she let us go.   (Did I mention I was 19 and David was 22?)

  And David and I drove to downtown San Diego and stood with our friends before a judge in a little office and signed as witnesses and then we all went to lunch at one of those hamburger restaurants that had the big red phone at the table and you call in your order directly to the kitchen. 

  And six months later they had a huge elaborate formal church wedding with numerous bridesmaids and groomsmen and I was the maid of honor.  And by that time David and I were officially engaged. 

   

  And a few years later, Michele and Jon divorced.  They lost a baby and then he cheated on her and I was at their place the night she figured it out.  I was there because he was supposedly out at a sports game of some sort and so we were having a girls’ night in, but we were watching the news and the team he said was playing wasn’t playing after all because they were at an out-of-town game which they had just lost. And so we hopped in the car and drove around aimlessly thinking… what? We would find him?  In the greater San Diego metropolis?  We drove by the base and we drove by the house of some woman that she thought he might have flirted with and we looked for his car, but never found it and we drove back to her house and I stayed the night with her in their perfectly decorated bedroom where a photo of their dead baby sat upon the dresser (she was a stillbirth, born fully developed at 9 months and I was there in the hospital, but that’s another story).  

  And he still hadn’t come home when I left in the morning.  

  When you’re childless and in your 20s, you do things like that – drive around in anger looking for an adulterer and keeping your best friend company through a tearful night. Or maybe people do that at any age under any circumstances. It was just the last time I did something like that.

  And my mom never said much about it and never told Michele’s mom (that I know of, but they weren’t close and didn’t talk much) and because we were afraid of my mom and just didn’t want to cause any ripples, David and I dutifully went to church with my mom and siblings all the rest of the Sundays until the week we got married, which was about a year after the elopement, on a Saturday in March 1989. And then I never went to church again.  EVER.  Except maybe to attend a wedding here or there.  

  My break from and, actually, real anger towards the church caused years of tears and arguments from my mother and eventually came between me and Michele, too, as I became more and more liberal (first the Jewish atheist boyfriend then the women’s studies major, it was inevitable) and she seemed (to me, at least) to become more and more conservative (with her pro-life brochures and her Christian rock concerts). I think somewhere around ’92 or ’93 I took her to an Indigo Girls concert and apparently she did not previously understand that they were lesbians and that many of their FANS were lesbians. She was extremely uncomfortable and made us leave early (I didn’t do it on purpose – she said she liked their music) and I think that was the turning point, when we realized the friendship was becoming uncomfortable.  People change.  

  • 2:15 am
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