May 2020: It Was Going To Look Like This
In November 2018 I called the events coordinator at Housing Work Bookstore Cafe and asked about booking a wedding date. Planning was second nature to me; calling eighteen months in advance felt like an excellent start. When the coordinator asked me what date we were interested in, I said: May 2nd, 2020.
Taken, he laughed.
So this was wedding planning in New York City. No matter. We looked at the calendar again. We talked about April (would it snow?) and later in May (when are graduations held?) Finally we came to a date: May 9, 2020. Emily and I went to sign the contract on a chilly morning in December 2018. I remember getting coffee at the La Colombe around the corner on Lafayette, both of us tucked into one of the small tables, grinning at one another. The year twenty twenty - two numbers, such symmetry! - sounded both impossible and magical. When we pictured the month of May, we pictured hopeful sunshine, blooming trees on the sidewalks of the city we called home. We talked about flowers and pie and playlists. We talked about money and made spreadsheets and gathered addresses and practiced dancing in the living room with The Indigo Girls blasting on our little speakers.
We could picture it. It was going to look like this.
We would wake up in a fancy hotel room in Soho, a gift from my mother. I’d be a bundle of nerves and joy. The night before our families would meet for the very first time - our brothers, our sisters in law, our nieces and nephew; my mother, my father, a few aunts and uncles, my step brothers; everyone embracing one another. Glasses raised. Blessings. The beginning of our wedding weekend.
One friend would pick up the ball jars full of flowers that we’d put together in our apartment on a weeknight with our friends. There would be votive candles for the tables; the sparkly box we ordered to hold the cards. The rings - the rings! - I would ask Emily one million times if she remembered to bring the rings, and she would always say that she had. There would be a flower crown for me; a boutonniere for Emily. She has a special bowtie, the color of which is threaded through the buttonhole on the cuff of her custom made suit. My dress is white silk crepe and makes me feel like a goddess. Our vows are written in a Moleskine notebook. Pastor LeAnn, from Emily’s childhood, has come all the way from Iowa to marry us. She prides herself on being the kind of pastor who can rock a collar and a leather jacket at the same time. The last time we saw her together was at a restaurant in Des Moines, bright laughter around the table, as we began to forge the ceremony that would mark our union.
When you entered the bookstore it would smell like flowers, books and butter. Balloons? Maybe there would be balloons! Here the plans are fuzzier; we didn’t get this far. How do we get from the hotel to the bookstore? We walk? We drive? The photographer, a queer woman full of grace and enthusiasm, tells us we look fabulous. We wait on the balcony for the ceremony to begin. We wave and blow kisses - here are our guests! Here are our family and friends; an aunt from Arizona hugs my mother. Emily’s cousin is talking theatre with my brother. There are queer friends in suits, booksellers we love so dearly, family from Philadelphia; upstate New York; California; Illinois; Texas; Oregon; Iowa; Arizona; Florida; Massachusetts. One friend holds up Emily’s phone so we can FaceTime everything to Emily’s dad, housebound in a nursing home in Iowa. We thought of everything. The friends I made at the Little School are laughing and waving; my father greets my uncles with warmth and love. My twenty-something cousin is happy to hear Maggie Rogers on our playlist. So much joy and we’re not even married yet.
The ceremony is a grace I can only imagine; it was the spiritual alchemy I was so looking forward to. We would ask Emily’s brother to play violin. We would ask my brother to read From Blossoms by Li-Young Lee. We had learned that in Irish tradition bells are rung at weddings to ward off evil spirits. Bell is also Emily’s middle name, the name of her late mother, Leanna Bell, who dared to not change her name once married in the early 1970s. And so we had found dozens and dozens of small brass bells for our loved ones to ring when we are married. The foundation of our love.
There are chicken biscuits and fried pickles. Cornbread with honey butter. A crisp asparagus salad with radishes, mint and a parmesan dressing. Spicy black eyed peas. Pulled pork piled onto potato rolls. Mac and cheese. Buttermilk mashed potatoes. Dishes piled high with fried chicken.
There are two speeches, one by each of the dear friends who were there the night we met. Remember the night we met? In a Brooklyn that feels so far away right now. I looked up at a party to the table of books for sale across the room and there you were.
On the table by the front door are framed photos: one of my mother and Barry on their wedding day; one of Emily’s mother and father on their wedding day. In memory of those who showed us how to love.
We dance to Whitney Houston and Stevie Wonder. Billy Joel and Beyoncé. Mariah Carey and Lizzo. So much Prince. We Are Family followed by Please, Mr. Postman followed by Ain’t No Mountain High Enough. Melissa Etheridge because we had to. Madonna and everyone sings along. Al Green. Janelle Monae. Talking Heads. Lauryn Hill. We know every song on our playlist backwards and forward. We could picture everyone dancing in the bookstore, the lights strung from the ceiling, the glasses on the bar, the apple pie and chocolate pudding pie and key lime pie and a small tower of donut holes because why not! A friend brings me a seltzer. Another friend gives me a huge hug. I can hear Emily’s laugh, the laugh I adore so much. Our nieces and nephew run around the bookstore, pie crumbs on their faces. Shoes have come off and everyone dances barefoot. I don’t want the day to end; I didn’t know the day may not come at all.
When Emily and I moved in together in 2014 we sorted through all of our books and had six bags to take to Housing Works for a donation. Emily stayed in the car while I ran the bags inside. The volunteer taking our donation chatted with me as we unloaded the books. “Spring cleaning?” she asks.
“My girlfriend and I just moved in together,” I say. “She’s a bookseller and I’m a writer, so. We have a lot of books.”
The volunteer has a glint in her eye when she looks at me. “Well,” she says, “we do weddings, you know.”
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The last time we were in Housing Works Bookstore was February 21, 2020. They hosted an evening for couples to see what the space looked like set up for weddings. We took photos of the space and pictured ourselves, our loved ones, our wedding. Here is where we’ll stand where we are married. Here is where the pies will be. Here are the tables where our family and friends and community will be gathered. Here is the city we love so much that we cannot wait to share with everyone. Here we are walking hand in hand down the cobblestone of Crosby Street.
Manhattan twinkles as we make our way to the subway. In ten days it will be different. In three weeks the wedding will be postponed to August; in two months even August may need to be postponed. The calendar is falling apart.
A wedding is not a marriage. A marriage is whatever we’re building right now, finding home in one another, watching the news, mourning our city, taking turns doing the dishes, reading in bed, putting our heads close together in the frame of the tiny screen through which we now see everyone we love. The box of brass bells sits on our kitchen counter in Brooklyn. In the weeks where everything was changing so rapidly, I would sometimes just pick one up and ring it, just to hear its sound. What’s it going to be like? we ask one another. Without doubt there can be no faith.
xo,
c