fifty years ago, tomorrow

my mother and father were married in the church two blocks from the ocean, where i would be baptized, communed and confirmed, the foundations of which my great-grandfather had literally poured. it was the same church where my mother would meet my stepfather, some six or seven years later.

but on that first glorious day of summer in 1958, all looks rosy and well in the photographs. my mother is an appropriately blushing bride, my father a handsome and charming groom. they look happy and proud and only a tad terrified, as if they were just beginning to realize that perhaps they'd bitten off a bite of something that they weren't quite prepared to chew.

which as it happened, they weren't.

but in the meantime, they pledged and they kissed, they danced and they waved, and they went off to bermuda and consummated their vows in a room overlooking a pink-sand beach. thus, i was conceived of not one virgin, but two*, on an island in the middle of the atlantic ocean, on the shortest night of the year.**

and furthermore, the war must end. blessed be.

* i confirmed this fact with my father, who when i mentioned it, chuckled in the way he does when i show him i know something he doesn't expect me to know, and said, "You're right."

** this is confirmed by my mother's original due date. i was ten days late, and thus, my original due date was march 21, exactly nine months to the day they were married.