Journal Entry #3,152: Four Near Disasters and a Wedding

You’re invited! It's thirty-eight years late, but don’t worry, we’re still accepting gifts. WRITTEN & ILLUSTRATED by PETER MOORE

I’VE BEEN WRITING DAILY JOURNAL ENTRIES since October 12, 1978, when I was living in Paris and trying to figure out what the hell to do with my life. And I’m sure I will figure it out, one of these years. This week I paged deep into my journal record, in anticipation of my (holy crap) 38th wedding anniversary, all of it to the same beautifully patient woman. You’ll meet Claire down below, on our wedding day. I’m glad the cranberry-juice stains came out of her dress.

My journal account begins with the invocation of the “extenuating circumstances act,” which means I wrote it the day after the date of record.

Some things take precedence over writing, OK?

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30 MAY 1987 (Extenuating Circumstances Act)

The most portentous day in your life thus far and you can’t record it in the journal on time? Memory don’t fail me now!

I slept OK on wedding eve, with only a minimum of ceiling-staring. I had a fitful breakfast at my parents’ condo, then [best man] Don and [groomsman] Mike blessedly came by to shepherd me through this day of days.

And I needed shepherding!

First, I drove them east to their hotel when they wanted to go west to New Haven, then I missed the exit on I-95. Finally we returned to the Trumbull Marriott for an afternoon languishing around the pool. I had one beer and an incredibly expensive hamburger, and Don [lawyer] and Mike [Catholic priest] watched over me as I swam laps and listened sympathetically as I mumbled.

We waited forever for our poolside meal service, then ran back to the rooms to change our clothes for the wedding.

My wedding!

I hopped into the shower and had the immediate sensation that my vision was going blurry. I was having a stroke!

Oh wait, no, I’d forgotten to take off my glasses along with the rest of my clothes.

I’d never done that before. Just like marriage.

After a few fumbling attempts, I finally knotted my bowtie, then pulled on my double-breasted blazer from Burberry. Everyone agreed that yes, by God, I looked like a groom.

We left for [Claire’s childhood home] in Bethany at about 2:30 and arrived a half an hour later—one hour to game time.

It being a very hot day (high 80s), my groomsmen and I hid in the bushes and courted the breezes, as slack as they were. This was the hottest May 30th in Connecticut history, which led my brother (an electrical engineer) to observe that our relationship had been heat-annealed, for durability.

The minutes passed, in the shrubbery. Finally my dad suggested that we go into the house—AC-less and steaming—and suffer like the women, so we did.

But not for long.

Soon we were choosing up sides for the processional, and I caught my first glimpse of my bride, on wedding day.

Heartbeat time!

The string quartet struck up the processional—Pachelbel’s Kanon in D—and my mother slipped her arm into mine. In a low voice, she began, “Well, Peter, this is such an important day of love, for your lifetime….”

I hissed “Don’t start, mom!,” lest she turn me to jelly on the most important public occasion of my life. She put a cork in it, and I had gathered my composure by the time I reached the altar.

Claire was there, too, which made it more fun.

I was nervous throughout the ceremony, but I maintained the illusion of being an upright person by leaning strongly to left, against the terrain in Claire’s side yard.

I enjoyed singing the hymns—Simple Gifts, Song of Thanksgiving—to dissipate the tension, and I was strong and steady of voice during the vows. Yes I said yes I will yes, just like Molly Bloom at the end of Ulysses. Claire was appropriately, beautifully tearful during her vows, and that was as it should be.

The only glitch came as our minister somehow failed to cough up his magic words: ”By the authority vested in me by the state of Connecticut, I now pronounces you stuck together by fate and circumstance.”

But, no.

Instead he whisper-shouted “Go!” at us, and flicked his wrists vehemently. The quartet had been listening for the same concluding phrase, so they failed to strike up our recessional—Brandenburg Concerto #3, Allegro.

We sprinted back up the aisle in silence—like fugitives from the land of single people!

After the ceremony, my mom wrinkled her brow and asked: “So is it official? The minister never pronounced you husband and wife!”

Legit or not, we formed a receiving line, and I gave a lot of people sweaty, soggy hugs and smooches. But hey, they were dripping, too, so it was only fair.

Next we gathered in the side yard for the presentation of a marriage quilt with squares decorated by our families and friends. Claire’s brother John, who’d orchestrated the project, used an heirloom sword to point out the highlights of the quilt .

And perhaps to remind his new brother-in-law to treat his sister well, or he might use that sword to amputate some of my personal flaws.

A bit later Claire and I escaped to her childhood bedroom for our first moments alone as husband and wife. I fetched her a glass of cranberry punch. It was a hot day! I was in love! I was feeling generous!

The glass had a few ice cubes and an orange slice in it. When she tipped it to her lips, the orange slice flipped forward and sent a cascade of crimson liquid onto her white dress. It was like that ghastly scene in The Deer Hunter, where a bride drips red wine onto her chest, foreshadowing the violence of Vietnam.

Only, this wasn’t foreshadowing, this was the beginning of our married life, and we hadn’t yet taken any photos of that formerly snowy, now vividly stained, dress!

After panicking, a lot, we launched a useful dialogue:

Q: “Who has experience dealing with food stains?

A: “A caterer!”

We ran to the kitchen, the servers gasped, and then our caterer earned her salary for the year: She attacked the stain with a solution of soda water and salt. Crimson faded to white. It was a miracle! Our married life was saved!

Well, the photos were saved, anyway. We’ll have to work on the marriage part.

Still shaken by cranberrypocalypse, we walked out into the backyard, people cheered, and we took photographs with absolutely everyone. Dinner broke that up, or we’d still be there, still grinning. My cheek muscles were exhausted!

Now began my evening of brief encounters with people–50 seconds here, a minute there, for hours. My best man gave a wonderful toast, calling these major occasions—birth, marriage, death—the constellations that guide us through life. Then Claire’s brother Pierre rose up to question what Claire was doing, leaving a family of three brothers to join one with four. The crowd roared. Then he reduced us to tears by invoking Claire’s late father, who died when the bride was nine years old.

Thanks for everything, Jack McCrea.

Jack wasn’t the only hero that evening, however.

Dave Clement, M.D., the obstetrician who had ushered Claire into the world thirty years earlier, put in a word for the bride, as the man who encouraged her first breaths as a newborn.

He would also prove to be the hero of Yikes III, when Claire’s stepdad Ed shifted in his chair, which caused the chair legs to sink into the lawn, which pitched him over sideways. He hurtled toward the table bearing the wedding cake.

After the crash, all three tiers rotated toward the ground. That’s when Dr. Dave leapt up and caught them, setting them aright.

It was much noted that Dave caught the bride at her birth, then caught the cake at her wedding.

They don’t make doctors like that anymore.

After the cake-cutting ceremony—we used that sword, again—the dancing began. First an oldies tape—I included my mom’s favorite song, The Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B—and then a youngies–tape, laced with Talking Heads.

We had quoted the lyrics from “Naive Melody/This Must be the Place” on the wedding program.

I can't tell one from another
Did I find you, or you find me?
There was a time before we were born
If someone asks, this where is we’ll be, where we’ll be

Hi yo, we drift in and out
Hi yo, sing into my mouth
Out of all those kinds of people
You got a face with a view

I'm just an animal looking for a home, and
Share the same space for a minute or two
And you love me 'til my heart stops
Love me 'til I'm dead
Eyes that light up, eyes look through you
Cover up the blank spots
Hit me on the head

I’ve got you-oo-oo-ooo-oooo—ooooooooo…..

After we’d enjoyed five hours of well-wishing, my bride proposed that we leave the reception. Good idea! The whole party gathered in the driveway to cheer as we drove off into married life. They’d sneakily filled our getaway car with balloons, and we left a trail of them bouncing down Sperry Road.

We drove to the Lawn Club in New Haven to collapse as husband and wife. I carried Claire over the threshold of our room, then I pulled out my L.L. Bean duffle bag to find my toothbrush. When I unzipped the duffle, I realized that I’d grabbed my groomsman’s identical bag by mistake.

The groomsman who had just taken his vows as a Catholic priest.

But it meant that our marriage had been well and truly consecrated.

And so it has remained.

“It’s wonderful to be married to an archaeologist — the older you get the more interested [s]he is in you.” —Agatha Christie

MY DAILY JOURNAL IS A CORE SOURCE of this Substack. Like for instance, that time I pissed into a volcano. Or when I told the story of how my journal-keeping began. Or any of the excerpts from my journal-based memoir, which you can catch up with here, here, or here. My journal has offered up some of my most popular posts, so thank you for clicking on them, dear readers. I only wish that the American Publishing Industry would catch on, and publish it all in book form.

Not yet, anyway.

Until that happens, I cordially remind you that I work hard doing this, and you’re my Medicis. I’d be much obliged if you’d subsidize my attempts to tickle myself and others.

Thank you for walking the aisle with me here on the Road2Elsewhere.

I do. Do you, too?