Almost 1/4 Century

Tomorrow Wifey and I will celebrate our 24th wedding anniversary. The day will also mark our family's holiday season, which begins with Chanukah (not too big a deal since the Ds have grown), Christmas Day/Wifey's birthday (Chinese food and a movie per Wifey's wishes, and a Xmas party at Arnald and Cathay's) and New Year's Eve (burning question each year for the past few: can Wifey and I stay up until midnight? This year we did, barely).

We decided to get married over Winter break because it made travel plans easier for family and friends to make it to Miami then. Where have the years gone?

Wifey and I wanted a simple luncheon outside as our wedding. We thought about Vizcaya or Matheson Hammock. My mother in law would have none of that. Wifey was the only child of Holocaust Survivors, and Rachel was having a big, Saturday night party. There's really no way to win when a relative plays the Holocaust card, and, the second mortgage my in laws took out to pay for the wedding gave them tremendous value in the guilt department years later when we had a dispute about whether Wifey and I owed them a waterfront condo. But that's another hilarious tale...

So it was to be a Saturday night at a big hotel. We checked several, but couldn't use them. Another thing: my mother in law insisted the meal be kosher. Over 150 guests attended, and precisely one of them kept kosher: my mother in law's brother Alter, from Boro Park. I had never met him, but he was my mother in law's closest relative (the rest had been killed in, that's right, the Holocaust, so the party was directed a certain way.

We picked the Hyatt Downtown, for their kosher kitchen, and the party was planned. After our Rabbi backed out at the last minute, to take a free trip to Israel, we were forced to find a relief rabbi. The original rabbi, who I'll call MArk Kram, since that's his name, lured Wifey and I into his Reform World with platitudes about how important he was going to be in our lives, etc... He bolted for the free trip like the old man first in line at Wolfie's on free rye bread night.

Fortunately, Dr. Eric's Mom Norma found a nice fellow named Lipson, and he acquitted himself nicely. The ceremony was lovely, punctuated by my father in law's clumsiness taking down several flower arrangements as he walked the aisle, and my mother in law grabbing Wifey for the post ceremony first kiss, before I could.

The dinner party was tons of fun. Wifey and I chose the band, Harry Frank and his combo, precisely because they were traditional, Borscht Belt quality. Harry was charming and fun, and they played our song, Sam Cooke's "You Send Me."

A major highlight was our friend Elizabeth's then husband, the rock singer Pat Travers. After 4 or 10 drinks, he took the stage and played some great rock and roll. Wifey's friend Eileen, even drunker, decided to join him, and sang "Lont Tall Sally" while Pat and the band played "Good Lovin'" It made for a memorable performance.

I danced with my mother, and remember thinking how old she was --a fragile old lady of 67. I wouldn't have dreamed she'd still be here, at nearly 91, and now really, really, really old. I'm talking ancient.

Wifey had 4 bridesmaids. She still keeps in touch with 2 of them. He best friend, Edna, couldn't make the trip from Atlanta because she was 9 months pregnant with her second daughter. Edna is still angry we didn't pick a later date...

I had 7 groomsmen. I'm still close with 4 of them: Drs. Eric and Barry, and Mike and Jeff. The other 3 have moved on and away from me.

After the party ended, after midnight, Wifey and I went up to our suite. We opened another bottle of champagne, got undressed, and then got into bed. We then engaged in the traditional first activity of a new husband and wife following a Jewish wedding. We opened the envelopes to see what gifts we received.

My mother's family was amazingly cheap. One aunt, my mother's only surviving sibling, brought several daughters and her husband and gave a check in the amount of $25, as I recall. Wifey's family and her parents' friends were much more generous.

Still, the money was in the thousands, and we decided to pay off one of my law school loans --one that bore a high interest rate.

We left the next day for our honeymoon in Jamaica. It was January, and the prices were high, and we could only afford to stay for 4 nights, as I recall. We had a blast --walking up Dunn's River Falls, taking a lazy boat down the Martha Brae River, where little boys offered speefs the size of footballs for sale, and getting lost in Falmouth in a rental car, where it took me 5 tries to extricate myself from a roundabout, as little Jamaican boys peed themselves watching me.

Wifey and I returned to our new life together, in our 1400 square foot house on SW 125 Terrace, a street with neighbors so quirky that David Lynch could have made a movie about them. Wifey worked for a flower company, selling cut flowers all over the country. I was a one year old lawyer, learning how to defend insurance companies on my $29k/ year salary.

We laughed a lot and were immeasurably happy. We savored our friends. We hosted parties. The Canes won national championships. Life was grand.

Of course, we had no idea what real happiness was, until a year and a half later, when D1 joined the band. We moved to a bigger house, on SW 136 Terrace, with less quirky neighbors (excluding the family of a notorious teenaged pedophile who was in prison, and targeted young girls at his church, and caused me to think we'd have to move before his family fled to the Netherlands following a controversial acquittal).

Then, in 1992, D2 joined the band, in time to live through Hurricane Andrew, and our house being, as D1 said, "misstroyed" around us.

It's funny. Wifey and I helped write our wedding vows, and we borrowed from Bob Dylan, promising to be each other's shelter from the storms of life. We didn't imagine we'd quite literally have to do it.

And so, tomorrow night, Wifey and I and the Ds will gather at Christy's in Coral Gables, to remember and celebrate. Maybe next year, if we're blessed to he around for number 25, we'll have a big party, or take a big trip.

All I know is, it's been a hell of a ride, and, looking back, the best night of my life.

She still sends me...