A couple of weeks ago, I attended a “bridal brunch,” which was really a shower, but it was for someone getting married for the second time. Now this friend had a horrid divorce. She had young kids, had been married about 15 years, and everyone thought they were the perfect couple. The divorce was really public and really awful. She got so thin that you could not see her sideways, and people wanted to throw heavy and pointed objects at her soon-to-be ex. It was very bad.
Now, no one knows what goes on in anyone else’s marriage, but no one deserves to be treated like she was. That being said, she has found love again. It seems he went through a bad divorce as well. Though, divorce hardly needs the word “bad” in front of it.
In any case, they are getting married and her friends made her a shower. A second shower is so much different than the first shower. At your first shower, there usually is a tempting spread of bagels and pastas, because we are young and we can eat those things without our thighs spreading simply upon gazing at the carbohydrates. There are prettily wrapped gifts, piled high, waiting to be opened and ooh and ahhed over. The bridesmaids act all naughty when giving you lingerie. “Oh my, it is see through,” giggle giggle. If we knew then what a waste of money lingerie was… if we knew then that some pajama pants from Target and a comfortable t-shirt would be so much more practical… yup, hindsight is 20/20. But we were in love and were going to have sex all the time.
Ahh… good times, that first shower.
But here we were, at the second, more mature, off-with-the-rose-colored-glasses shower. Oh, the sweet, beautiful practicality of it all. Gone were the carbohydrates that were served at your first shower. (Though, that isn’t entirely true; I did find some carbs, but I was the only one at this shower who ate them.) The gifts were thoughtful and useful, unlike the gravy boat my mother-in-law gave me at mine.
But, it still was a shower, and on the wall was a “panty line.” Yes, it is what it sounds like. A series of panties hanging from a clothesline, each delineating when they should be worn. And because we know now what we should have known then, there they were, the comfortable granny panties that we all wear, but don’t tell anyone we wear. Because the most important part of marriage is to be comfortable—with ourselves, with our partners, and always with the ability to laugh. Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn’t, but that is also the beauty of not really knowing anything at all.
We are so naive when it comes to love and marriage the first time around. We host gatherings of well-meaning friends and relatives to celebrate our upcoming nuptials with giddiness and glee. We are dumbstruck in love and never think that we will ever fight or want to smother the other one with a pillow. We are still in the stage of believing that both families will get along and go out to dinner and have holidays together. Yup, if we only knew then what we know now, people might never get married.
In the end, whether it’s your first marriage or not, you just have to cross your fingers, shut your eyes, and take a leap of faith. And hope and pray it works out. And if it doesn’t, hope that there is a reason for that as well.
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