*This is a work of nonfiction based on actual events I experienced firsthand; used with permission.*
One of the greatest memories of my life was the day my mom got married.
You see, I have never met my biological father, but my mom started dating my step-dad when I was nine and when they got married at ten he adopted me - making me his real daughter, legally and of course in my heart forever.
At ten, I was my mother’s Maid of Honor in her wedding, and it was the first time I got to wear a fancy, pouffy skirted dress and to ride in a limousine.
Basically, it was the most exciting day of my life up to that point, and probably my mother’s too.
When we arrived by limousine to the venue I got out with my mom, grandmother and grandfather, who of course was going to walk her down the aisle.
But first, he needed to help my mom navigate the series of board walked paths to get to the little church, and by no one’s fault, the back of my mom’s heel got caught between two of the boards as she was walking.
My mom fell out of her shoe and pitched forward too fast for my grandfather to catch her, smacking her face into the ground as she fell.
“Ahhh,” my mom cried out, and my grandpa got down on the ground to asses the situation.
“I’m bleeding, I can’t get blood on the dress,” my mom said, and laid there on the ground, face down, pinching the bridge of her broken nose for a good five minutes while my grandfather used his expensive kerchief to wipe her face clean.
My grandmother went ahead and informed the rest of the wedding party and my father of what happened and assured the delay would be short.
Someone ran out with a bottle of water to help my mom clean her face, and though the blood washed away, her nose was bright red for the wedding and started to swell during the reception.
The next day, before heading off to their honeymoon, they stopped at an urgent care center for my mom to get her nose X-Rayed and taped up.
If it were my wedding, I would have probably been devastated that I had to go through it with a red, swollen, painful nose, but my mom took everything in stride and thirty years on it’s a good story that we retell over dinner each year, and somehow it gets funnier each time.
Comments / 35