Episode 87. Little Mac's Memoirs - The Ongoing Wedding

Every morning, before we got up, we would join hands and say I do. It was Bertie's idea, of course. First time we woke up after the ceremony, she reached over. And it was that way till the day she died. We were always getting married. It never seemed to be a big deal, but every time we did it, I felt that much more equipped to face the day.

To tell the truth, I still reach out. I don't wake up so early anymore since Cousin Minnie financed my retirement. I wait till whenever my eyes feel the daylight on them. And then just like clockwork, out goes my hand in search of hers. I don't think about it, it just happens. There when I was crazy in my mind, when I thought she had left me, I would squeeze my hand in on itself so hard my nails would cut my palm and our daughter Delilah would want to know why there was these little bloodstains on the sheets. And I would tell her and she would say that's what I get for never trimming my nails anymore but just peeling them off when inspiration struck. That old hand would hurt for hours afterwards. As if the arthritis weren't enough.

But now I do it lightly, the way you have to if you have only the spirit of something to hold onto, the way a person who's almost in their right mind should. The way you would if you were picking up a little bird that fell out of its nest. And instead of shouting out "I still do!" to scare a groggy household half to death, now I just say it softly like we always did, as if we were sharing a secret.

However, these are my memoirs of now, so to act as if I were really capable of doing that, of just living in the present the way Bertie wanted, let me heave out my anchor into what I am looking at instead of drifting with my thoughts.

We are having a family field trip. It's a place where I used to bring Bertie now and again for picnics. A sandy bank of the River Meander where it feeds into Minas Basin on the Bay of Fundy. Noah and Sir Barksalot are running down along the riverbed, it being low tide, and Delilah and Cousin Minnie are grilling burgers. As for me, before I got into the task of these memoirs, I went over to an old rock I knew to see if the wine bottle was still there that Bertie and I buried a long time ago. And to my great surprise I found it, the cork still in it and the message inside. Mold had grown over the paper and made it too big to come out of the neck. I doubt the words would have shown through the mold, so I just left it there. I knew what they said anyway.

They said, "The river grass grows like a tapestry, not like a bunch of separate stalks. And it is like my love for you, that is composed of everything I know and am."

I was never much of a poet, but I wrote that and it was good and it was published in that bottle and Bertie never forgot it, though I did for a while when my memory took a vacation.

And now I am just sitting here in a folding lawn chair, dabbling my bare old veiny feet in the sand and watching my grandson chase his dog and vice versa and my daughter and cousin Minnie make our picnic lunch. In this ongoing wedding that is not missing anyone, because the river grass grows like a tapestry.

22 September 2018
Texas Jim
River Meander, Nova Scotia
www.granitecoast.ca