16 years ago...

Lou stood out behind Uncle Roger's apartment by the little creek running behind the yard. "This is as close as I'll ever feel to a bomber pilot making his run," he thought, tongue-in-cheek. The time had come to finish the rather shocking upheaval that came with falling for and marrying a girl he'd just met in a genuine whirlwind romance. But sometimes you know.

Meanwhile, Gina, the bride-to-be, was surrounded by Lou’s cousins, her sisters, and other well-wishers preparing her for beauty on the big day. She needed a nap. The rain outside had drizzled away a very nice idea to hold the wedding in the park. The date had been rushed up to the present as fast as possible for numerous reasons, among them the fact that Lou quit his job after saving just enough money for a trip to Colorado. Things had changed, but it was still an awkward in-between time for such a life-move.

Why get married at all? His Bride-to-Be had already agreed to go West with him. He’d developed a personal philosophy that no piece of paper can keep you together; he'd yet to understand the many different states of relationship possible, but always he’d been cut out to be very wrapped up in whoever he could find that felt the same way. Yet in no way was he actively looking for any of that...when suddenly, this woman he’d met one month was engaged to him the next.
Something between stubbornness, faith, and smoldering attraction (and maybe a little fear, in the distance?) had made him adamant, made them both adamant, they had fallen in love and were going to stay that way forever.

The reasons behind the wedding, however, centered around family, in so many ways. For one, they might start a family any day, and things would be simpler in most every way if they were married. For another, Lou didn't want her family to worry about her going off with this guy they'd just met; she'd never even spent more than a slumber party night away from home, and here we were, headed 1500 miles west into the Unknown: no job, no home, one contact, all in faith that a better life could be made in Colorado. Couldn’t he offer her something more for taking this leap?

But another terrific reason was the bride's father was an ordained minister who still performed weddings, and Lou loved him immediately, from the night the girls brought him home to meet everyone (and continue talking). He did not want to take Gina away from her good people---people so good seemed hard to find. This was a way to start with the best intentions, including everyone. With the rain, the wedding would be set in her house---her living room, our chapel, with well-wishers seated and a ton of cousins peeking in through the windows.


So he donned jeans and vest, so stubbornly picked to reflect his absolute stoicism and simplicity, as he ran out of time to find the sort of fey poet shirt we thought might make a nice touch. He scratched his beard and cranked up the Corolla, back in the days when they were made in Tennessee and known to last (and STOP). continues

They disappeared without warning, not an hour before the ceremony.
One minute, Papa Bowman's going over the steps of the wedding vows amidst a very busy household packed past capacity with people. The next, the freshly-arrived groom couldn't be found.

An announcement at "Gina's" job, which she didn't tack up but which she couldn't avoid, let all of her co-workers, her sister's co-workers, and her brother's ex-co-workers know: her impulsive decision to marry her new boyfriend was going to lead to a lovely, quickly-put-together ceremony in her hometown. It was the closest thing to a Charlie Sheen moment in their lives, so out of support and curiosity for the bizarre, many, many of them came.

A wedding was a very exciting thing, and Lou's many cousins and aunts and uncle were wrapped up in the big celebration. The speed of things seemed to come second to their sheer affection for him, the oldest brother's only son and oldest child. Many of the cousins took an automatic liking to his frankly winsome and petite bride.

While this was a special day to share with all of these people, it was not really about anyone but the boy and girl at its center. Tradition was keeping them apart until the wedding at 2:30pm; it was bad luck, after all, for the groom to see the bride. Why that would be, no one seemed to know. "Because."

Lou was not the most patient---or perhaps, emotionally stable---and definitely not, tame---young man at this point, if ever. His decision that dressing up in a nicely made suit would be "fraudulent" and his insistence to wear embarrassingly simple clothes, as though he were going hiking, was taken in stride as eccentricity---by the family, at least. Who knows what his friends he'd grown up with thought about any of this; he was known to have a wild side, to be one who would choose to stick out. For some of the wedding guests, it had to be a clue, when he didn't change...and then, they heard the news: he and the bride had vanished.

It was no quiet occurrence. Whatever dose of nerves or feelings or madness led Lou to utterly disrupt the proceedings, to him it was a mix of clingy desperation and the unique closeness he felt to Gina. "Gina" was just a nickname, an airhead's nickname borrowed from a so-so comedy, Martin, for that matter. Who the girl REALLY was seemed to evade most everyone. But they were the only two people at the center, suddenly, of all the attention of everyone in both families and more.

This very private conspiracy to love one another completely and for always now had seen the inescapable light of day. Who knows what loneliness may have driven them both together? In his case, it was of choice; the person he had been was fading like a shell opening to reveal a seed, which ate away the nutritious coating of what it had been before, to take root in the elements. His old way of life was changing in every way, and so, it seemed a time to slip away from his place in all of it. An exciting new idea of what to try to be beckoned.

For Gina, it was so much more simple: she'd quietly slipped out of sight, too. Always her sister's shadow, she had tried to live a little for herself, but the consequences left her very disappointed. Her appetite had fled, her work became her life, and about her troubles she knew not what to say, until her beautiful young man had come to her with warmth, humor, and affection. He'd fed her with his own mouth, and given her attention that elevated her sense of self-worth to reveal more than the shade she'd become.

So when this pied piper of her heart came to her window, playing his harmonica, she smiled, all the way to the eyes, for the first time that day. Her well-meaning wedding help had plastered her with adorable, doll=like dollops of make-up, as her petite frame longed for his embrace, and perhaps, a nice nap. When he said, "this is bullshit, honey, let's go somewhere for a minute! Come with me! Seriously!" he said it with a smile, too. The urgency was contagious; against the efforts of no less than four or five of his adorable cousins, she managed to get out the door and into his hands. It was all one big game to them. He'd simply disappeared from Papa's side to reach her through her bedroom door, and barefoot the two of them fled to his getaway car, as the slightest early spring rain began to fall once more.

The chaos and bemusement left in their wake was barely apparent to the two of them.

"Are they going to elope? "
"They BETTER not, after all the trouble we went to arrange a nice wedding on short notice!" "They're going to break up!"
"You don't know them, they're more likely to elope than break up."
"They'll be back. Maybe it's just the pressure of the day."

"Maybe they figured out they are in over their heads. I wonder what will happen next?"

If cell phones were every where in those days, none of this would've went down quite the same...I imagine.

Maybe Lou and Gina only needed to exchange a comforting message or two; a text with
a warm joke, a silly photo, a brief conversation. The confusion it would've saved even in the wake of their sudden exodus, too, may have led to the sister deciding to go through with the wedding song she'd planned, abandoned with the hurt realization now that her shadow had joined another in a profound way. It's so easy to do today---if you can afford your phone, and you almost can't afford NOT to have a phone---it's easy to take for granted what the gulf between them felt like, when their feelings and thoughts were centered completely around one another.


A deeply intimate experience united them, and in Lou's rush to get the wedding date set as soon as possible, there was very little time to adjust to sharing their wonderful secret with everyone. Perhaps a less superstitious and silly old fashioned motive of young girls who could hardly fathom all of this would've led to a brief conference in the hallway. This created the desperation that led him to the outside of Gina's room, bright notes in the key of 'G' insistently prying his young bride to the window.

"This is bullshit, honey!" he declared. "I want to see you! I want to talk with you!"

How could she deny her heart?

She couldn't. The same set of impulses that drove her to his side for life drove her to him now. Together, they pulled her through the doorway filled with laughing and screaming young cousins who blocked it. Barefoot, they ran out the back door, around the gate to the waiting car, and sped away.

The mixed-up household in their wake was forgotten a few minutes, as he drove around her small hometown and they talked, so glad to be together. They kissed as the light drizzle evaporated, and he complimented her on her dress, a converted Prom number found by her frugal family just the week before. He took a few drops of rain from the wind and began to wipe away some of her excess make-up. "There's my baby," he said. "There's the girl I fell in love with."

No one had quite understood her loneliness at the point she met Lou; Gina's love life had been disappointing even in its newness, and seemed a lost cause by the time they'd met. Her feelings for him were a kind of sweet torture; it was well known he was departing town, but his smile and friendship had been the one bright spot in her private misery. Her weight, carefully shorn away by consistent exercise, had dropped precipitously, her frame carrying less than ninety pounds, and some of that owing to the generous nature of her sister Louemmie, who thoughtfully would sneak bits of chicken into her salads at work. Her despair was a debilitation with which she could work; the wishes of others had always taken precedent, as though she genuinely had little idea how to live for herself.

The sudden flood of his affections, her very first flower, her very first time being truly swept, literally off her feet, and his dazzling offer to run away together only days after their first kiss filled a hole too profound for light. Caring little else for herself, she trusted him, taking the chance to know such love, even should he change his mind and leave her behind. His proposal came the day after his offer to travel to Colorado, and she accepted it without hesitation. He'd re-enacted it many times by now, including one memorable time in the Hardee's parking lot beside Floyd Hospital. He left no question as to his adamant feelings; while some swear so fervently, to this day he loves her still.


The vows revisited in that car seat held them together for all the days to come. The quiet and calm of one another's presence---they were barely out of their teens---gave Lou the strength and consideration to head back towards the house, with the 2:30 pm wedding start date still in mind.

As they were a few minutes late, speculation and amusement hit a fever pitch. His friends couldn't help but laugh at the minor debacle; who knows what their thoughts were? By now sister was in angry tears, feeling left out of anything in her little sister's life for the first time.



Her brother, asked to give her away, stood by smiling with his bandaged hand as they entered together. Perhaps there was no other way, given the circumstances, not the least of which, the spectacle their absence had created, but also, the nature of their courtship, which had transported the two to a unique plane.

The most predictable and obedient child of the family now returned with her rebel to her father's side, and he laughed and picked up the ceremony with gladness. No one could be said to believe more in the power of love than he, and his words from the Bible and his sincere gift of ceremony to his young daughter moved them both. The oblivious best man, chosen painfully to avoid choosing over two dear friends, was not necessary for the fortitude offered so often to the groom, although, with some words of communication, perhaps he could've dissolved the confusion. He performed his simple function with great amusement, already prepared for the surreal experience of Lou's wedding in much the same way one prepares for a Pink Floyd concert.

As for the vows: the distant video camera to this day tells us nothing of what was said, words all nervously improvised but steadily delivered. Lou spoke his vows to the ceiling, as though that was where God could hear them. The gentle father pronounced the two husband and wife, and then, shutting the Good Book, leaned in to hug them both in his strong arms. "Always remember," he said happily, tearfully, "to cling to one another."

And that they did. They always will.

The wedding itself, filled with Baptists, did not break out in dancing, though there was great cheer. The tent party back at the apartment he shared with his sister and her fiance, his original roommate, is remembered for the fifteen or so people crowded within the tent, set up in his sister's room to evoke a sense of romance, as the air filled with the strains of the Beatles' "Revolver" album. Lou and Gina met his dear friend at the Waffle House later for warm congratulation. By the light of the next morning, the car was packed with a tent, food, pans and clothes, and away they left to honeymoon at a commune they'd heard about, somewhere outside Nashville...

...and that, I assure you, is another adventure, itself, that never really has, even today, reached THE END.

Never heard of a "tent party" before. Sounds kind of like a pretend camp-out when you're a kid and can't go out on a rainy day.

Sometimes, unfortunately, you just can't find someone who will cling to you. Sometimes when you try to cling loyally your hands get pried loose.

That's why it's "...to each other." So I agree.

Yes, that's why the tent's there, all right! A fondness for child-like activities
was all the vibe for post-high school kids. Un-ironic hipness.

Sorry for everyone expecting a humorous essay about socks and general dryer calamities.