I Even Remember That Milk Drink He Was Putting Bitters In

My sister got engaged today, and I’ve had to come to grips with the, now, undeniable wisdom of Father Nanton. He’s the priest that married MJ and me. He’s a crotchety, self-important, Episcopal priest. We chose him because when he’s not being a priest, he’s a laid back Trinidadian and we were sold a bill of goods. He was living in Miami and flew up to Jacksonville to marry us and on the ride from the airport to my parents’ house in Orange Park we were talking about the ceremony. My goal was to leave the ceremony legally wed to MJ. Anything short of that would be a massive failure. Anything beyond that would be an unqualified success. He had different ideas. He was asking me about how the seats would be set up and where people would be sitting and blah blah blah. I was flying down I-295 at this point doing about 110. This was two days before the wedding, and MJ was having serious issues with the reverend already. His wanting to change basic plans that had nothing to do with the Lord was not going to help. He started going on in his mellifluous baritone Caribbean drawl – dude has a world class speaking voice – about how all the couples that would be there, young and old, would be reliving their weddings vicariously through ours. My attitude was, whatever! I was treating this thing like a bank robbery – get in, get out, the rest is ego. Then today came and my mother told me about my sister getting engaged. I was a little bit giddy – that’s the best way I can describe it. I was really excited for her and her fiancé, JH, but I was also taken back to June 15, 2002 in Ponte Vedra, Florida. That was such a magical day for me. It was the happiest day of my life. I remember everything about that day. I remember everything about the rehearsal the day before. It was better than the day LMJ was born, even though I was consumed with an all encompassing love that I didn’t think was possible and was totally unprepared for when the nurse handed her to me. My wedding day was better than the birth of my daughter because on LMJ’s birthday I watched my wife get an episiotomy, on my wedding day I fed her cake.

As an afterthought, CEJ, if you read this my only advice is to skimp on the wedding and splurge on the honeymoon – and maybe pick a rabbi, from somewhere other than Trinidad, to marry you. It’s better to be safe than sorry.