I Do

Mark Richard Siegel and Carol Elaine Drew on their wedding day in March 1972

I was 29 years old when I first saw this picture of my parents. My grandmother and I were going through family photo albums. My grandparents were just starting their “we may die soon, we are going to start getting rid of some of these things now” phase, which was prompting the photo album review.

I didn’t recognize the picture. My mother was not the sentimental type: she explained to me when I was 8 years old she did not carry photos of me or my brother with her in her purse or wallet because “I know what you look like”.  But my mother loved photography and, as such, our lives growing up were surprisingly well documented.

I am the sentimental type and loved going through our family photo albums when I was growing up, asking my parents about the stories behind the pictures, where we were living at the time, how old I was or how old they were. Even now, when I go through photo albums I have inherited, I am surprised at how much I can remember when I am relating my family’s earlier years to Basil.

So I was surprised to see a photo where my folks were dressed up that I was not familiar with. I asked my grandmother where it was taken.

“That was their wedding reception,” she explained.

My mouth dropped open in shock: I had never seen a single picture of my parents on their wedding day.

Now, if I were reading this and knew nothing more about me, I might think of the following scenarios:

Scenario 1: Your parents weren’t married very long.

Nope. They were married for 31 years, until the day my father died.

Scenario 2: It was a shotgun wedding and/or your mother was pregnant.

Nope. No kids for nine years and my discussions with witnesses years later have not suggested otherwise. And if you had met either of my grandfathers, you would know they were not the shotgun type.

Scenario 3: They were in a rush to move in together/start married life and so the wedding was rushed/informal.

Nope. Prior to this photo and their wedding, my mother had already left home at the age of 16 and spent at least a semester living with my father in the all guy dorms at Williams College.

Or maybe I suggest people wonder those things because these are the things I have crossed off on the notepad in my mind as I have thought about my parents’ wedding.

I cannot remember my father ever talking about their wedding day.

The only time my mother talked about it was when I happened to borrow a crushed black velvet jacket from her for a school play in the first grade. The jacket was clearly old (vintage, the hipsters would say now) and when I asked her where she had gotten it, she explained she had worn it on her wedding day.

“You wore black on your wedding day?” I wasn’t a wedding expert at age 6, but I had seen enough Disney movies to know white was the usual choice.

My mother said she didn’t think women should feel obligated to wear white on their wedding day. I started to ask her about the wedding, realizing I had never been told about it.

She said, “We just got married in front of a judge, at the judge’s house. The ceremony was in front of this big mirror, so we could see ourselves and our brothers and sisters staring back at us. It was awful.”

I did not ask any more questions about their wedding after that. Ever. And by the time I saw the picture, my father was dead and my mother and I had not spoken in years. I did not ask my grandmother anything else about it that day.

Not long after Basil and I started to plan our wedding, I saw the picture again. This time I was more inspired and I decided I was going to ask more questions about it to my remaining relatives while I could.

I asked my Grandpa Marvin (Dad’s dad) about it and he complained he thought the venue for their reception wasn’t nice enough. My mother’s parents paid for the reception (probably the only traditional thing about their wedding), which apparently gave my grandfather license to grouse about the choice.

My Grandma Joyce (Dad’s mom) didn’t have much to add, except she corroborated the part about them being married by a judge.

I asked my Aunt Terry (Mom’s sister, only surviving sibling) about it and she had the most to tell: after being married at the judge’s house, everyone went for a reception at a fancy hotel restaurant near Niagara Falls. Their siblings and parents were there. She was the only person I asked who seemed to imply people had a nice time and it could have been perceived as a joyous occasion.

The other witnesses I have interviewed have yielded another detail: my parents were potentially under the influence of several illegal substances on their wedding day, most notably peyote. These witnesses have also said part of the reason the mirror was so upsetting to some folks present is they were afraid of being busted for being high or that the judge would figure it out and refuse to marry them. Which could also mean my parents never said much about their wedding day because they themselves may not have remembered much of it.

What people don’t say but what underlies all of these discussions I have forced people to have with me about my parent’s wedding is there were a lot of people who didn’t want them to get married. My father’s parents thought my mother was unstable (she was). It is purported my mother’s Catholic parents didn’t want her marrying a Jew (I have never found or observed anything indicating this is true). I have learned in interviewing their friends and siblings the fights I assumed my parents had saved for after they had children they had actually been having ever since they were in their late teens (screaming, dish breaking, drag outs). Even if you were trying to support my parents getting married on their wedding day, you likely had a troubled conscious about it. And looking into a giant mirror at a judge’s house probably made it worse.

And so here is perhaps why my parent’s wedding day is not well documented and was never talked about: it wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t a fairy tale. No doves were released, no church organ played, no glass was stepped on. It was a utilitarian affair meets a drug-fueled dinner reception with uneasy guests.

But I believe it still deserves to be remembered. They had two kids and over three decades of insane adventures together. They loved each other. And they loved me.