MOTHER OF THE GROOM

Marcia Norwood
America's STORYTELLER
Telling Untold Stories in Photographs, Prose and Public Speaking

MOTHER OF THE GROOM
A True Story

Copyright 1997 Marcia Norwood

“I’m not a master gardener,  but I am wiser for the time I have spent in my garden.   I’ve discovered it takes something more than human hands to create a beautiful garden.   It's a partnership with the Creator of the Universe.  Cultivating a friendship is a partnership, too, -- of giving and receiving. “

Mary Marcia Lee Norwood

Antique Missouri Military Wagon in the Norwood Gardens

My role as Mother of the Bride was much easier than my role as Mother of the Groom.  I’ve been both and lived to tell about it…barely. Our daughter, Kristin, was married at our church.  I prepared all the floral bouquets and arrangements, made the punch, baked 500 mini-blueberry muffins, created the wedding programs, decorated the church fellowship hall for the reception, and for the most part acted as wedding coordinator.

Piece of Cake.

Four years later, our son, Benjamin, was married in our rose garden. My husband, Ed, and I worked hard to make the gardens around our Colonial home “picture-perfect.”   Benjamin and Ed designed and built a Victorian gazebo for the wedding ceremony.    Construction halted when Ed stepped on a nail causing a puncture wound that refused to heal.   Ed was back at work after surgery and a brief hospital stay, sporting crutches and swallowing  pain medication, and meds to cure the staff infection.

 

Norwood Front Gardens: Two Tiny Ponds,  Pergola with Swing, Picket Fence, Gazebo

Spring sprang at the Norwood Gardens.   Blossoms of butter-yellow forsythia; fluffy, Cool-Whip-white and pink-lemonade crabapple; and brilliant, iridescent pink-icing  redwood trees  lined our hundred foot driveway. 

Crabapple Tree

  Stately  wintergreen boxwood marched along one side the rose parade.  The fragrance of  blood-red, Don Juan roses was intoxicating.  Birdies bathed unashamedly on the front lawn.  Their shower-songs were accompanied by chirping crickets and croaking frogs sunbathing on stone ledges of two tiny, bubbling  ponds.    Butterflies fluttered to and fro.  

A robin bathes unashamedly on the front lawn

 

Two Tiny Bubbling Ponds

The slightest breeze stirred the heady perfume of lavender wisteria blooms as they fell gently from their perch on the overhead pergola.   

Wisteria

Fire-engine-red and school-bus-yellow tulips stood guard along the thirty foot sidewalk to our front door. 

Tulips

 Periwinkle blue vinca made their way between hot pink and lipstick-red azaleas and fuchsia rhododendrons on both sides of the white picket fence.  Sweet, peach honeysuckle vines and golden-yellow roses climbed the white-washed gazebo.    Tiny faces of pansies in multicultural shades of yellow, white, lavender and purple peeked out between the parsley and chives.  

Honeysuckle Vines

It was my heart’s desire to dazzle and delight members of the wedding party, and properly pamper the wedding guests, who were our closest friends and family.   Each guest had their own throne:  an ornate, white, Victorian garden chair.   

Preparations took their toll on my body.  I stooped from hours of dead-heading petals,  and lifting big rocks to find their rightful place in the garden.    My arms and hands were scratched from thorns and thistles.   My once-manicured nails were clipped (accidentally) with a pair of pruning shears.    My hands were rough and calloused.   I was covered from head to toe with poison oak, ivy and sumac.  

I exchanged my favorite perfume, Shalimar ™, and my Mary-Kay ™  make-up for Oak-N-Ivy CalaGel ™, Tecnu™,  and Calamine Lotion.    I gained ten pounds for every dose of steroids I swallowed to get rid of the poison, oak, ivy and sumac.  Let's see . . . four doses that year, and by the time the wisteria covered the entire pergola . . . I was too heavy to sit in the porch swing.  

I was still outside about one o’clock a.m. the morning of the wedding . . . watering the roses.  I slipped and fell – unable to get up.  My left knee was smashed and turned the wrong way UNDERNEATH me.  I didn’t move for twenty minutes…while the water from the garden hose continued to flow.  

All I could think about was “NOW – How am I going to finish wallpapering the guest bathroom before the wedding?” which was only hours away.

Ed was inside the house – asleep on the sofa, to avoid taking the stairs to our master bedroom on the second floor.  Somehow I managed to pull myself up out of the mud and thorns and crawled into the house. 

   

I woke up Ed.  He hobbled on his crutches to shut off the water.  We were both too tired to go to the Emergency Room.   Ed slept on the couch, and I slept beside him on the floor.  A couple of hours later I wiped off the dried mud.  Ed dropped me off at the ER and went on his way to take care of last-minute wedding errands. It's amazing how fast the Emergency Room will work you through when you tell them 100-plus guests are due at your home in a few hours for a wedding.  

Ed called for reinforcements.  The very friends and family we wanted to lavish our love on…came to our rescue.  My dearest friend, Janice Christopher, picked me up from the ER; brought me home; and stayed to help.  Along with Janice, my sister-in-laws: Lisa and Gail Bush and special friends Cheryl Mullis and  Alicia Hoff saved the day!  There would have been no wedding without them. 

Ed and I were both strung out on pain pills.  I sat in the middle of the floor of my kitchen giving orders.  The “Steel Magnolias” pretty much ignored me and did as they pleased.  The guest bathroom on the main floor of our home did get wallpapered after all, and with grateful hearts - we even made Janice's macho-husband, Dale, an “Honorary Steel Magnolia" for his help in cleaning and decorating!  

Dale and Janice Christopher

All in all it was quite a wedding day.  Ed looked so handsome in his tails and splints and crutches.  Under my full-length gown one could barely see the lines of my cast/immobilizer that ran from my crotch to my toes.  Glassy-eyed from pain medication - not tears, Ed and I limped along through the gazebo, down the stairs and joined the wedding guests sitting in beautiful, ornate, white, thrones that covered our soggy but well manicured lawn for this sacred event.  Tables with umbrellas dotted the horizon.  It was surreal -- at least in my mind.

I hardly noticed when the wind velocity picked up and sent one of the umbrellas airborne until it hit the gazebo during the opening song.  It alarmed some of the wedding guests.   Ed and I were undaunted.  The gentleman playing the keyboard was a little shaken - but the soloists, Bill and Jennifer Hildebrand, persevered.   

Things really began to get fun when the two ring bearers, dressed in tails...drove around the back of our two-story Colonial home in their own miniature Jeep decorated for the occasion.  They were followed by the flower girls attired in white lace - driving their own miniature, Barbie convertible. 

After vows and rings were exchanged our beloved pastor, Dr. William O. Poe, gave the closing prayer.  The wedding guests strolled through the gazebo and well-watered rose garden, and filed into our home for the reception.   

Everyone really seemed to enjoy the garden wedding - even the ones not heavily medicated.  

Thanks for stopping by!

Come back again, and bring a friend!

Marcia Norwood
America's STORYTELLER
Telling Untold Stories in Photographs, Prose and Public Speaking
Email:  marcia.norwood@sbcglobal.net