Coupled.

There is fear. And then there’s the moment when you are standing and he’s kneeling and he has a ring and he is asking and you are wondering how to answer him and you know the answer is one quick word with three letters and somehow you still don’t know what to say because you never really thought this day would ever really come because there are so many girls who are so much more beautiful and articulate and flirty and worthy and giggly; girls who eat salad and go to the gym with their mixing bottle full of protein power and their lulu lemon workout pants; girls who don’t snort when they laugh too hard; girls who were the prom queen and the drama princess; girls who got a 35 on their ACT; girls who like to fish and ride four wheelers without falling off; girls who can ice skate like Nancy Kerrigan even after the whole Tonya Harding thing; girls who don’t get flustered and drop the first bite of their first meal with you on their ample chest (which is ample because of donuts and not a plastic surgeon); girls who can golf and look graceful as they flit about in their darling little golf skirt and throw their tiny little legs out of the cart to hit a perfect shot toward the waiting green; you know, nothing specific, but a girl like that.

Who falls in love with a girl on a Saturday night in the frozen food section when you are both reaching for the Totinos pizza rolls? Who wants to marry the girl who hasn’t been kissed in so long that she’s pretty sure she will need to dust off her lips like an old shelf at grandma’s house with your first pair of shoes on it? Who picks out a ring for a girl who doesn’t know the names of the Star Wars characters and can’t tell you if a character is Marvel or DC but has recently, and ironically, made her way through a marathon of the History Channel’s season of Alone?

Who finds themselves standing in a wedding dress with ridiculous amount of make-up on at a venue that she got bullied into by a mother who has longed so intensely for this day that she even asked the man who weeds her yard if he is single and a mother-in-law so intense that she makes Lara Croft look like a pushover? A MIL who was not over-the-moon that her oldest son had chosen a girl who couldn’t fit one leg, let alone her entire galumph, into her mother’s wedding gown.

 The ritual was about to begin. I stood at the end of the corridor of people like a great white wave which was about to surge over the edges of the tiny little aisle that made the thoroughfare on a plane look massive. I imagined myself in the Colosseum where the lion was about to be released and I was wearing sirloin underwear. They were all standing stone still and staring my direction. I turned to look behind me. There was no way to retreat. I was book-ended in by white chairs, thousands of distant and unknown relatives and a photographer and videographer buzzing about like persistent mosquitoes. The tiny little flower girls had already tottled their way to the front leaving the path strewn with rose petals.

Daddy was at my side dressed like a waiter at that restaurant with the real cloth napkins and he had my arm in a vicelike grip just above my elbow. My fingers were beginning to numb below the tourniquet of his sausage fingers. A bead of sweat had formed on his forehead and was making its way toward his chin like a river winding its way through a tree patched forest. He wasn’t ready to turn me over to the charming one at the end and he was just as unsteady as I was about going through with the whole affair. He was beginning to breathe like he had just run a marathon. His hair was slicked back to where it cascaded over the fold of skin at the top of his suit coat. He was also looking straight ahead with a stone-cold eye on the men who stood to meet us at the end of this labyrinth of onlookers at the finish line. I think he was probably somewhere between his oh-shit and hell-no moment. I was his baby girl. He was not eager to give me away which is high praise for a man who had me around for nearly four decades.

On the green at the end of the straightaway between the guests was the religious one who was going to wrap up the whole affair with the powers of heaven. The grey strands in his hair began just above his ears and swept toward the back of his head like a wave pulling back from the sea as the tide ebbs back into the ocean. The man to his left was many years his junior. He was looking down at his hands. It was as if he hadn’t noticed that I had arrived yet which surprised me because I thought he’d be locking the doors to all the exits right about now just to ensure I didn’t attempt an escape from Alcatraz. He always managed to have more faith in me than I did. To his left, there stood two other men that were anticipating what came next with rapt attention. His still-single friends who had an escape vehicle at the end of the driveway, which was running, just in case their best friend got abandoned at the altar.

I jumped when the music began behind me and the ferocity of it caused my heart to leap from where it had fallen in the pit of my stomach to the top of my throat where it lodged like an overly large grape swallowed at a park on a the first eighty-four-degree day of the summer. It was time for something to happen and that something was me. I took the first unsteady step like a nine-month-old. Dad pulled me closer to him. It was meant to be a calming gesture but instead it tipped us like an old fishing boat, and we almost went tumbling onto Aunt Betty who had the audacity to bring her mini-whatever doodle to the wedding. I was once again a little girl on my first two-wheeled bicycle with my Daddy standing behind me holding onto the end of the seat preparing to let go as I took my first solo ride without the rickety training wheels on either side.

My soon-to-be was now looking my direction with eager eyes. He was secretly hoping that the two of us would find a way to topple into the tenth row because what a story it would make, and the video mosquito would have it all on tape. This was one of the things I loved the most about the man who wanted us to be together forever. He was the kind of guy stopped at a lemonade stand to buy the little entrepreneurs out of their whole pitcher; he laughs with his whole body but doesn’t make a sound; he listens to every detail of my day as I rant for forty-five minutes without interrupting unless to ask another question like I’m the most fascinating thing in the room; he knows how to whisper my name when the tears come; he knows when to hold me when I talk about my brother who died when I was twelve; he never wanted the golf-skirt girl or the one on her way into the gym. He wanted me. And he would never let go even when I pushed.

I finally find him at the end of the long walk of my life. He takes my hand. I am no longer afraid.

And the religious one begins….