When I was thirteen, I witnessed my mother sobbing. She was in the hallway that served as our mudroom. And she was vacuuming. With passion. Her father’s watch was missing. He died in 1969.
My mother died in 2004.
I don’t have her watch.
Or her father’s. What I do have is her penchant for sobbing while vacuuming. It really does cover the sniffling and wailing well. She was onto something.
My vacuum sob was two weeks ago. I had spent the afternoon texting with my sister-in-law about bridal showers and etiquette. Wedding etiquette has become a preoccupation of mine. An unhealthy one. According to the slew of websites I had found, bridal showers should only be attended by wedding guests. And only if the bride intends to register for gifts. First issue, our wedding is small; and most of our guest list lives two time zones away, and they are not likely to travel for a bridal shower two months before the wedding. Second issue, Ryan and I are adults; we’re not registering for gifts; we need a home, not things to fill one.
So… Small wedding with out of town guests and no registry? Etiquette says, “No bridal shower.” Instead have a “Couples Cocktail Party” or skip the entire shower step.
Ryan came up as I was ending the conversation with my sister-in-law and asked what was wrong. I tried to use words to explain how I felt about the bridal shower etiquette, and my desire to follow the etiquette to a t. The likelihood that out of state guests would fly out in March for a bridal shower only to return in May for our wedding is small. And the line about only wedding guests allowed bothered Ryan. As he lay on our bed expounding on the out-datedness of etiquette, and the acceptance of our friends who would be okay with only attending the bridal shower… because they know we are paying for this ourselves, I realized why I was hanging onto Etiquette like a skirt to hide behind.
I’m planning my wedding without my mother. And she would know what to do.
I snapped at Ryan. I said, “I can’t do this anymore. I feel alone in this.” And then I kicked him out of our bedroom.
It’s hard to talk when those moment seize you. When you realize the person who has the answer you need is unreachable. So I vacuumed. And sobbed. And our bedroom is really small, so after 45 seconds, I turned off the vacuum, crawled onto the bed, and cried like my mother had just died.
This is going to happen a few times over the next year. It’s going to happen more than a few times over the rest of my life. I’m getting misty-eyed thinking about bringing home our first child, and telling stories about my mother the same way my mother told me stories about her father. Such is the life of a motherless daughter.
I can’t be the only one like me–planning a wedding without a mother but with a supportive fiancé. And as I couldn’t find the Etiquette for this particular situation, I figured I would write it.