My little sister was married this weekend. She drove away with her new husband in a flower-garlanded car, waving and smiling radiantly, tucked up among blankets and fur like a young queen. I watched her go with happy tears brimming in my eyes, just one among a throng of laughing guests, a face that surely lost itself amidst the well-wishers to her dazzled gaze. Stepping away from the rest I stood alone in the drive, straining in the dark to read the handmade signs that friends had fastened to the back of the car: Just Married! New Orleans or Bust! Mr. and Mrs. Jones… In that moment an awareness came to me, slipping quietly forth from the exhausting tumult of emotions I had experienced that day, and I knew—if only in part—just how my sister had felt on my wedding day over five years ago.
I married my love on a Sunday in June. Friends have remarked since that my wedding was as much “Avonlea” as my sister’s was “1930’s Glamour”. It was everything that my girlhood dreams had painted on my imagination: dancing on the lawn to a Scottish fiddler, the bounty of friends’ flower gardens gracing every possible space, lemonade on the porch and hot tea served from Mrs. Jones’ indispensable silver service. My bridesmaids were in pink organza, and I wore my grandmother’s dress with a coronet of roses and sweet peas. Liz hates pink, but she wore it with a lovely grace she refuses to believe. And her future groom was there, too, though little more than a good chum and a friend of my brother’s at the time.
Since her wedding Friday night my mind has been a bright whirl of memories old and new, mingling images of her day with mine in a happy bedlam of incongruous thoughts. But in the midst of it some things stand out to me as they hadn’t before, new experiences and emotions giving context to the old. I think of her gentle hands attaching my veil and spreading it out around me in a filmy cloud; I remember her being left at the church after the rest of the wedding party had departed for the reception and having to hitch a ride with one of the groomsmen who got lost on the way; I see her laughing hysterically after her set in the Virginia Reel had completely disintegrated. But most poignantly, I remember Liz coming to me in the hall just before I stepped out on the porch to throw my bouquet. She looked up at me with a sweet, urgent pleading in her eyes and said, “I want your bouquet.” Now, it scarcely seems necessary to make such a request, as well-mannered maidens typically defer to the sister-of-the-bride in such matters, but Liz had staunchly declared for weeks that she wanted none of it. “I’m not getting married any time soon,” she would say with a tilting of her pretty chin,” so you might as well let someone else have it.” At the last, however, there was a longing for it, and I’m beginning to wonder if my bouquet wasn’t to her a tangible bit of me, a piece of evidence she longed to claim that would assure her that I was indeed coming back as the same older sister she had always known.
I know now that desperate eagerness for the return from the honeymoon, that yearning to lay eyes on her, to take in her happiness at a glance, and to read in her answering smile an unaltered affection for me. I know what it is to be the sister-of-the-bride, tired and a bit sad, and reeling with the mad excitement of past days. And I know that little nagging uncertainty—even in perfect joy—of just where I will stand when everything settles into place once more. My heart pains me to think that I ever might have given my sister a moment’s doubt on that matter, but I’m sure in all the confusion of being a bride myself that I did. And perhaps that is why her tender consideration of me has struck me with such force in these days following her wedding, for my feelings are but a fraction of what hers must have been at mine. I have an advantage over her: she is joining me, while when I married, I left her behind. I was the first to break rank.
Elizabeth’s wedding day was resplendent for January, with a fiery sunset and just enough of a chill in the air for these Southern ladies to feel justified in pulling out their furs. A holy hush fell over the candlelit church as the processional began, and one by one her friends, my fellow bridesmaids, slipped down the aisle, their silver dresses shimmering faintly in the dim light. I turned to take her in once more before my time came and was nearly overcome with the picture she made beneath the piquant modesty of her French net veil. Her eyes were luminous with joy, but she had room for a thought of me, even in that most hallowed moment. “I love you,” she said fervently, reaching from beneath her cascading orchids and squeezing my hand. I felt her trembling and smiled knowingly. She looked down at her fluttering bouquet and a laugh sparkled across her face. “You were shaking more,” she reminded me with an impish look.
Long ago when our weddings had seemed a distant hope glimmering on the horizon we had made a solemn promise to one another not to bawl when the other was married. Liz had held up her end of the bargain admirably when she stood at my left hand; and so determined was I to maintain my composure in a similar manner that it hadn’t even occurred to me to tuck a handkerchief in among my flowers that night. I simply was not prepared for the tide of feeling that swept over me at the look in Dave’s eyes upon his sight of her, at her little voice repeating the most sacred vows a person can make, at the magnificent pleasure of God that seemed to fill the room like sweet incense. Tears welled, they brimmed, they spilled over. I sniffed frantically, struggling for self-possession. I felt light-headed and faint, and when we bowed to pray, I pleaded with God to keep me together. And then, with every head lowered, Liz slipped her hand out of Dave’s and pressed her little blue handkerchief into my fingers. That gesture said a thousand things to me: I’m here, I’m not going anywhere, even if we move to New York or Chicago, or any place else on this globe, I’ll always be your little sister, and we’ll always need each other.
I watched her at the reception, and delighted in her delight, fun-loving little fairy that she is. From the peacock feathers on the wedding cake to the flamboyant callas and glads to the four-piece jazz band, every detail was uniquely Liz: stylish, fitting, bright as the yellow roses she loves so well. But amid all of the good-hearted clamor of loving friends, one vignette claims my mind’s eye. It was towards the end of the party, and the word went round the room that the bride and groom would be leaving soon. I slipped up the stairs to get my wrap off the bed, and as I reached the top landing on my way down again I paused to savor the moment. A childhood fancy that has never been quite out of my consciousness leapt to the fore and I almost laughed. When turned loose to play in my grandmother’s house as a little girl, my favorite game was to stand at the top of the stairs and imagine a glittering party going on down below. I was a beautiful grown-up lady in a dress that swept the floor, and when I reached the landing I would stop and smile down on them all with a beneficent grace. Well, I was grown now, and the filmy black net of my dress most surely touched the floor. The party below could not have been more glittering, what with the candles and the flowers and such beautiful friends, and I stood there smiling on them all, unnoticed in my little realized dream. Suddenly Liz turned from a cluster of hugs and kisses and cried, “Sister!” Her voice rang out with a merry lilt, infusing that one word with all the affection one soul could wish from another. I was happy to the very core of my heart
, and rushed down the rest of the way for one last hug and good wish for the honeymoon.
Like a flock of birds startled into flight and settling peaceably once more, so are the changes that come in the lives of sisters, each fluttering upheaval resolving itself into a calm all the sweeter for its momentary restlessness. All our past life has shown me this, with its heartaches and joys, journeys abroad and happy reunions, falling in love and marriage. But as I stood in the drive that night, in the first flight of insecurity, I blessed her in my heart for her deference towards me, for each loving smile and quick clasp of the hand that told me with the tenderest grace that I was dear to her. And it is for this that I can say with the sweetest conviction that standing up as her matron-of-honor has indeed been one of the greatest honors of my life.
