New Year’s Eve Nuptials

“Out with the Old, In with the New” is a line we hear often around New Year’s time.  In a way, of course, that’s much easier said than done:  aren’t we all more or less amalgamations of what’s past, what’s present, and what’s still to come?

You may grant me the first two easily but hesitate at the third:  none of us can fully predict what is still in front of us, and that is probably for the best.  But think of that commercial on television, for a financial services company, that shows maybe a 30-something guy sitting next to maybe a 70-something guy on an airplane and being taken aback in recognizing an older version of his own self.   The implication is clear:  the decisions you make today will affect – at least in part – how things turn out for you later on.  Indeed, you are really both yourself now and yourself years later – not to mention still carrying the child, the teenager, the young adult you once were.

And yet, on New Year’s Eve we revel in the simple idea that we can let bygones be bygones and begin again.  For my extended family, this feeling was accentuated by the fact that my eldest brother got married just a few hours before 2011 turned into 2012.  It was a second wedding for both bride and groom, and my husband (who has become, for better or worse, the family clergyman) did the ceremony.  He even talked about how they were like Adam and Eve, walking into the Garden of Eden for the first time, and demonstrated this fact by putting crowns of ivy upon both of their heads.  Holding the Book of Common Prayer, he said “Let their love for each other be a seal upon their hearts, a mantle about their shoulders, and a crown upon their foreheads.”  My three sisters-in-law each read other prayers, one expressing the hope that all married couples present would “find their lives strengthened and their loyalties confirmed” by witnessing this couple becoming a kind of new king and queen of Creation.

For those of you who do not regularly watch your spouse perform weddings, you might imagine that it is, to say the least, interesting.  I tend to listen closely for whatever Rob might say about marriage apart from what he reads in the book; on one memorable occasion, for instance, he compared getting married to starting a compost pile.  And when you see your own big brother – with a whole lot of life experience behind him — standing there as the groom, well, things get even more interesting.  Could we have dreamed this scene up thirty years ago?

At the reception that went on well after midnight, my brother gave a toast in which he talked about feeling very much like a man at the brink of a new life.  He also told a lovely little story about how, even in the process of being born, the New can be gently reminded of the Old.  On the day before, as wedding preparations were in full swing at his bride’s house, a car drove up the driveway and an elderly woman emerged–-someone he didn’t know.  It turned out that she had worked as a maid at this house (owned then by the bride’s grandparents) when she was 17 years old and had, for some reason, been struck by a desire or found it convenient to show her two daughters the place on this day.  She didn’t much care about the festivities to come; for her, the visit was all about memories of the way things used to be – what had changed and what had stayed the same.  In showing her around, my brother needed to make room for the past on his plate filled with thoughts of the future.

In the days immediately following, I too was pulled back to years gone by.  We still own the house where my four brothers and I grew up, even though our mother died seven years ago.  While staying there for a couple of nights, I had an opportunity to begin taking inventory of things to prepare for the almost inevitable selling of the place.  I went room to room, jotting down notes about what I found, starting with framed art that would need to be distributed among us.  It felt as if this oh-so-familiar house was poised, or maybe tottering, on a new precipice between the past and the future.  Everywhere I looked I sensed the presence of my parents or remembered how it felt when the house – now so small and quiet– was all swirling activity and friends and laughing and dogs’ tails wagging.

In one of the bedroom closets, I found something I never would have expected to find:  a huge leather-bound Bible published before 1900.  Considering the fact that we had not been a churchgoing family, this was indeed surprising.  With the help of my husband, I hope to learn about its origin.  And, who knows, maybe it can be a new and stalwart companion for me, the pastor’s wife, as I make my way into the days ahead.