My son – my eldest child – got married yesterday. To a beautiful, elegant, intelligent bride. I was not there. None of his family was. That was by choice and not an antagonistic one.
The couple deliberately sought and got the privacy and simplicity they wanted as they exchanged their vows. Family watched the live-streamed event at Ottawa City Hall from a great distance on our computers. Technology, eh?
Our society creates so many false expectations and financial demands around weddings. So much so that it didn’t surprise me when I read many divorces take place because the couple seems to forget that a wedding is followed by an actual marriage. Which is way different.
For years, I pooh-poohed the importance of having an intimate, loving relationship in my own life. If I’m honest, fear held me back in single, celibate check. I figured if you can’t skate yourself and everyone in your family is a really bad skater, don’t head to an ice rink and make a fool of yourself.
My parents made a complete cockup of their marriage. They both brought a bag full of unprocessed issues and dysfunction to the table. Within that marriage’s walls, three daughters were dutifully born one after the other.
I was number one. A precarious perch to hold in any family dynamic. That place in the siblings’ birth order is loaded with expectations and often imposes a sense of excessive responsibility on that child. Perhaps even moreso in the specific circumstances of my birth once my origins became clear to me.
Unearthed in counseling, the wise woman listened patiently to my seemingly endless tales of maternal betrayal. In one pivotal session, she stopped short, looked up from her notepad and piercingly asked: “Is there any chance your parents had to get married?” My world flipped. The immediate sense of potential truth I had shook me to my core.
That night, I called my father and uncomfortably asked him the question. His response was sheepish, but honest. “We were going to get married anyway.” It was a sweet phone call tinged with sadness.
Then I called my mother asking the same question. I might just as well asked her if she routinely drove pins into small helpless animals for sport. She shrieked at me and called me down and accused me of all manner of foul things that I even DARED to ask such a question. “How could you!?” Her response was my answer.
I married my children’s father under a Sword of Damocles. My mother was clearly upset leading up to and at the event itself. Still she didn’t say a single negative word. Instead, she smiled too much and too broadly, paced about the room and looked decidedly drawn and anxious at the little wedding ceremony we managed to have.
That marriage was not a great romantic story. I believed the guy I married was the ”boy next door.” Plucked carelessly from the available pool surrounding me at the time. Safe and harmless, I reasoned. We would have one of those loveless marriages of convenience. We’d raise good kids. He would be the chief cook, bottle washer and cheering section to support my rising star.
Since I was not in love with him, I believed he could not hurt me. That delusion was emphatically ripped away after my son was born. In spite of two university degrees, it turned out my real education was only just beginning.
My mother’s abundantly and publicly supported my son’s father. And I, like a hapless beast who finds itself being sucked into quicksand or a tarpit, faced the dawning realization my mother was my mother in name only.
The flimsy bonds of attachment I had had to her already unravelled in an instant. Never marry or have children to give your parents grand babies. The ensuing years were difficult and traumatizing.
Such is the unwelcome gift children inherit from unhealed, immature parents. “Growing up” isn’t easy under the best of circumstances. In our family’s convoluted and dysfunctional dynamic, the damage and scarring continued well into adulthood.
My greatest regret was the trauma and deprivation foisted upon my children. They were born into circumstances they had no control over and didn’t deserve. What child does?
So my son and his bride’s decision to marry yesterday after his own faltering first attempt was and is – as all important ventures are – a victory of hope over experience.
I feel the same about my own marriage. Truly a “whodda thunkit” situation. After years on my own, I was blessed in my dotage to find someone I can love and laugh with. I love and appreciate my husband beyond my own understanding. We treasure each moment we have together and all the more because we know our time together is limited.
There is a simple happy moral to the story at this point. The bonds of intergenerational trauma in my little family – while far from being fully healed – have at least been confronted and challenged.
My two children and me – and their father too, to be fair – have committed to and follow our own healing path. Admitting there is a problem, they say, is the first step to overcoming it.
For Cameron and Shaar, I wish them every imaginable positive experience and joyous occasion their formal union now opens to them. They have had a pretty phenomenal run as partners.
I wish them the strength and wisdom they will need to face and overcome inevitable challenges and disappointments that will come into their lives.
I support their growth, their love, and their boundaries. It is their life and their show. I am happy to be invited to watch that show occasionally and take part in the assigned parts I am given as I can.
From where I sit, the vows Cameron and Shaar took today exhibit a maturity and commitment that will serve them both as they evolve in their married life.
In ideal relationships, we believe love will give us the security and support to help us heal and grow. I wish that for both of them.
Let the future unfold as it will in the spirit that abounded at yesterday’s lovely and intimate ceremony.
Much love and good wishes on your forward path, you two. God bless and Namaste.
Expressive Compulsive 