A Wedding Anniversary

Mountain Laurel on the bank

"If you came this way,

Taking the route you would be likely to take

From the place you would be likely to come from,

If you came this way in may time, you would find the hedges

White again, in May with voluptuary sweetness."

This Sunday the Colonel and I will celebrate our 40th wedding anniversary. Yes, it was 1969;

he had just finished the US Army rotary wing flight school a few weeks before. We had been engaged for 5 months, and there was really no one to plan a wedding for us but ourselves. So, we did. Well, he did. He suggested the church camp he had attended in northwest Alabama. I wore the white dress I had made for graduation, and my First Lieutenant wore his dress blues. Our two best friends stood with us, D.S. Pearson and his wife. The Rev. Epps and his wife did all the rest. This is the chapel where we married. It was open air at the time with no glass. Though it was a simple building, and the service was read exactly from the 1928 Book of Common Prayer,

late on a May afternoon, it was quite grand to us.

"You are here to kneel,

Where prayer has been valid. And prayer is more

Than an order of words, the conscious occupation

Of the praying mind, or the sound of the voice praying."

We felt just as these two may have felt because we also had reason to be fearful for our future. The four people there with us knew and did all in their power to make this our very special day.
Mrs. Epps picked a glorious bouquet of mountain laurel from the steep bank leading down to Clear Creek behind the chapel. I carried it as if it had cost thousands. We had really beautiful gold rings etched with roses enhanced with black carbonising to make the images stand out. Our best man and maid of honor wore their Sunday clothes and their love for us.

Epps Hall as it is called today served as a reception hall where Mrs. Epps served us pound cake and Coca Cola. After we helped her put things away, we changed clothes, and went canoeing on Clear Creek for about an hour. Then we drove back to the city. We weren't too keen on a honeymoon because we mostly wanted to be with family.


So we said goodbye to what would become a very important and even sacred place in our lives.


Both our sons attended church camp here.


On Tuesday the 27th, I graduated from high school. My mother and ailing father, and my husband were in the audience. I am ashamed to admit that I cannot remember if either older sister was there. Afterward, I remember turning in my gown folded neatly in a box, and having a big cry as I said goodbye to classmates - many of whom I had known since the first grade.
We spent the rest of the week staying alternately at our parents' homes.

On the following Saturday, June 1st, our two best friends, my husband's mother and father, my husband and I, drove together to the airport. I vowed I would be brave and not embarrass my soldier. I was ... briefly ... until that plane took off to the other side of the world. I am forever grateful to the four people who peeled me away from the huge window looking on to the runway and upheld me through the longest year
ever....

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excerpts from T. S. Eliot's THE FOUR QUARTETS: Little Gidding