The reason for this isn’t just that Carrollton’s a big city, but also that we don’t have a lot of friends who live in Carrollton. That’s not to say we don’t have a lot of friends. We do. They just happen to be scattered throughout the various Dallas suburbs.

Interestingly, of my four cousins, none of whom have ever lived in the same town as me, two have settled down in the area. Mike, the cousin who lives in Carrollton–just two miles from me, in fact–is not one of the friends I’ve encountered in town. But I did run into him in Plano (population 222,000) yesterday–and not at the Plano Walmart.

Oh no, it was way more random than that.

Our friends the Mortons live in Plano. They’re having a baby in December, and as we couldn’t attend the baby shower, we dropped by their house with a gift. Just as we pulled up, the Mortons came out with some people carrying a table. And who should be one of the table-carriers? You guessed it, my cousin Mike.

My immediate thought, of course, was that Mike knew the Mortons. Church was the most likely place they’d meet–until I realized the Mortons and Mike don’t go to the same church. Then I remembered Katie Morton is a school nurse in Plano, and Mike’s wife Donna teaches in Plano, so maybe they knew each other from school. Before I could ask, Mr. Burt did.

Mike’s reply was not, “Through our wives.”

Chuckling, he said, “Through Craig’s List.”

Mr. Burt and I gawped at each other.

“Let me get this straight,” I said to my cousin, “you bought a table off Craig’s List from our friends, who you don’t know, and happened to come pick it up at the same time as we dropped by to visit them for the first time in months?”

As it turned out, I still had to be set straight; the story got even more random. Mike wasn’t buying the table. Friends of his wife bought it. Mike was just there with his mother-in-law’s truck to help them get it home. At the same time as we dropped by to visit our friends for the first time in months.

One of you readers who’s good at math needs to tell me what the odds of that are. Pretty astronomical, I’d wager.

Because he was supposed to marry me.

When I caught a glimpse of him in the newspaper, it was love at first sight between me and the handsome future King of England who was just my age. Or it would be, once he saw me–by which time he’d already be well on his way to falling deeply in love with me, thanks to the beautiful letter of sympathy I’d written to him upon the occasion of his mother’s tragic death.

It would have to be a real humdinger, as no doubt William had servants who read his post first to weed out the girls who were only after his power, riches, and masculine beauty from the one who truly loved him. If there is ever anything I can do… I wrote, convinced that the letter-reader’s response would be, Oh yes, Miss Bond, there is something you can do—heal His Royal Highness’ heart. Because nothing bespeaks true love like the phrase, Until that time, know that you are in my prayers whenever I think of you. Even the Apostle whose words I’d hijacked couldn’t have prayed as much for his fledgling churches as I was praying for William, because the first century had a distinct lack of 24-hour news coverage about celebrities dying to keep people frequently in his thoughts.

Also, Paul wasn’t a fifteen year-old girl.

He especially wasn’t a fifteen year-old girl who got caught by her father smuggling Diana-related newspapers back to her room and, flushing furiously, told him she was saving them because they were “history in the making”–as was getting up at three in the morning on a Saturday to watch Princess Diana’s funeral–like he didn’t know the truth, like every other father of a teenage daughter in 1997.

My letter never made it to Prince William—or his servant who read letters—it never even got finished–so I thankfully am spared the humiliation of having attempted to woo royalty with godliness. I only have to live with the humiliation of having played that card in my love games with regular boys at school and in youth group—about as successfully, I might add, as I would have been with His Royal Highness. The first boy who did take an interest, two years later, informed me that what actually drew me to him was not my prayers, but my pants—the blue plaid ones. And we all know what that’s teenage boy code for.

Not surprisingly, that relationship was no more destined to be than the one I had dreamed of with Prince William. For a big dose of irony, my first boyfriend played a prince in our high school production of Into the Woods—and used his charm both on-stage and off, with more girls than just me.

Princes were seriously over-rated, I decided, much as Sondheim’s Cinderella did. You have to work too hard to get–and keep–them.

Mr. Burt came into my life without the stench of prince anywhere near him. Well–he had played one of the Three Kings in a church play, but Binky the Wise Man bearing gifts of ties, toasters, and soaps-on-a-rope is a far cry from crowns and glass slippers and senior proms and angsty teenage romances. I never played any games with Mr. Burt; the first night we met I hadn’t washed my hair or put on makeup, and I spit popcorn on him. He wasn’t looking for me to impress him–though I did when I worked out the meaning of the word defenestration by using my (extremely limited) German vocabulary–and when I scored a date simply by being myself, I knew my search for Prince Charming was over.

Though that doesn’t mean I won’t get up at three in the morning to watch the royal wedding. After all, it’s history in the making.

Both my grandfathers were World War II vets. Grandpa Benton fought in Germany and received a Purple Heart when he was wounded rescuing his comrades from a tank that hit a land mine. Papa was in the Pacific, a cook in the Army. Written like that, next to Grandpa Benton’s brave act in combat, Papa’s role in the war seems less than heroic.

Far from it.

While stationed in the Philippines, Papa met a little street kid–an orphan. Papa had a baby girl back home in Texas, born while he was overseas–a sacrifice I’m only beginning to understand as a new parent. But even though Papa missed out on the hands-on experiences of becoming a father, he was a natural dad. He looked out for the boy, feeding him leftovers from the Army mess. More than that, he befriended the boy, loved him–so much that he wanted to take him home with him. And not in that wishful thinking way so many people, myself included, have when they meet a child in poverty or without parents; Papa actually began the process of legally adopting him.

It didn’t work out. But even though it didn’t, Papa was a hero for trying to make a difference in that little Filipino boy’s life. In fact, he didn’t just try; for the time he was in Manila, he did make a difference. And continues to make a difference through this story as it’s passed down from his children to his grandchildren to his great-grandchildren.

And that’s what Veteran’s Day is all about.

So thank you, Papa–and happy birthday.

Growing up, Mom always put her Sunday roast in the oven before church, so that lunch was ready the moment we got home from services, our mouths watering with the scent that wafted even through the garage.

Now that I’m grown up, roasts are usually a Sunday evening meal, but I’m beginning to think Mom was on to something by not being in the house while her roasts cooked slowly in the oven. Smelling a roast for three hours certainly makes you anticipate dinner, but more or less in that way a prisoner anticipates his torturers leaving him alone for the day. Especially when you’ve skipped lunch.

Tonight I cooked my first roast since the Burt Squirt began eating solid foods. I was tempted to give him tastes because it seemed cruel for him to have smelled it all day and then have to watch Mr. Burt and me eat it. I didn’t give in to the temptation, and my guilt was assuaged by the enthusiasm with which he ate his Gerber carrots.

Still, I find myself looking forward to the day when the Burt Squirt is old enough to eat his first roast. I wonder if it’ll become a favorite meal, like it is for my brother and me–Mom’s special recipe, better than any other pot roast you’ll ever eat. (Do you know anyone who seasons a roast with soy sauce and chili powder?) I wonder if, when he smells it as an adult, the scent will trigger vivid memories of me peeling vegetables, of coming home from tests at school or grueling athletic practice to soul food.

Though mostly I wonder: will he follow in his father’s footsteps and hate cooked carrots, or will I have to share them?

“Just wait,” I told him. “Someday we’ll be old and married and so desperate to get away from our offspring that we’ll hire a babysitter and go to Target and think it’s the funnest thing we’ve done in a long time.”

“Nope, not gonna happen,” Mr. Burt insisted, and then took me to a local pizza joint where we jockeyed for position with birthday boys and girls at the skee ball machines.

Famous last words–even if they were accompanied by a confident derisive snort.

Actually, it turns out we were both sort of right: seven years later, we’re married and once, if not twice a month, are shooed out of the house by my mother, whose favorite way to spend a Saturday is babysitting the Burt Squirt (to the consternation of our neighbor Patty, who wants a baby fix badly enough to offer a babysitting rate that’s in direct competition with Grandmommy’s), and our idea of a good date is still skee ball at Dave and Buster’s.

The difference is that seven years ago, Mr. Burt wouldn’t have responded to my suggestion that, after dinner, we go walk around IKEA, by saying, “Sure. It’ll be good exercise.”

Next thing we know, we’ll be power-walking in the mall with our pants pulled up to our chests.

Talkativeness, for example.

When I wasn’t quite three, my parents took me on a road trip up the Pacific Coastal Highway. They figured I’d sleep the whole way. It seemed a safe assumption to make, as most kids sleep in cars.

I, however, was not most kids.

Not only did I stay awake the entire drive through California, I talked the whole time, too, earning myself the nickname Chatty Cathy.

My mother also wished I would have a chatterbox child when I grew up. She has amazing power. (I’m terrified about the karmic retribution I’m in for after The Playground Incident.)

Though the Burt Squirt, of course, has never been called Chatty Cathy, he has been dubbed Jabberwocky. He’s nowhere near three, but any time he’s in the car, he’s awake and talking.

For that matter, any time he’s awake, he’s talking.

And as of 4:30 this morning, he doesn’t even have to be awake to be talking.

That would be the Bond coming out in him.

You see, the Burt Squirt comes from a long line of sleep-talkers. My shining moment occurred on a family vacation, when my father, up late reading, heard me say to my brother in the other bed, “Don’t tell Dad!” Dad once freaked my mom out by suddenly sitting up in bed one night and whacking the foot of the bed, saying, “It’s in the sheets!” Mom never was sure of what it was; maybe the same it my brother was talking about when Dad caught him sleep-walking one night and Greg mumbled something unintelligible before slugging Dad on the shoulder and saying, “Psst! Dad, pass it on.”

But it’s Mom who has, fittingly, the mother of all sleep-talking stories. It was Dad’s turn to get a little surprise the night Mom sat up in bed, grabbed his hand, brought it up to her lips, and planted a smacking kiss on it. When he asked her, bemused, what she was doing, Mom replied, “It’s a handshake–a friendly gesture!” and promptly lay back down.

I’d be more surprised if the Burt Squirt didn’t talk in his sleep. Though I thought we’d at least get through the baby monitor years before he followed in the family footsteps. Which was how I witnessed this milestone: Mr. Burt was putting the Burt Squirt back to bed after I nursed him at 4 AM, while I tried, unsuccessfully, to fall back asleep due to the stream of baby babble emitting from the monitor on my bedside table. I was feeling rather sorry for Mr. Burt, thinking he’d be in there a while if the Burt Squirt was that wide awake, when suddenly he was crawling back into bed with me, laughing.

“He was talking in his sleep!” he said, and I realized the baby monitor was silent.

“Aw, he said dada in his sleep while you were patting him,” I said, thinking of how my brother and I always had that uncanny ability to sleep-talk about or to my dad when he was awake to hear it.

The Burt Squirt’s sentience would have been more impressive had I not earlier that day witnessed him look directly at the cat and shriek, “Dada!”

In fact, dada seems to be the Burt Squirt’s word of choice for describing anything that makes him happy, as you can see in this video in which he is clearly not asleep.

…or is he?

Unwieldy and expensive, it was all I wanted for my 14th birthday. I’d coveted the book all summer long after falling in love with a character in the movie the movie, unable to pass a Disney Store without going in and thumbing through the pages of concept and finished art. I was Ralphie, and it was my Red Ryder BB gun with a compass in the stock and this thing which tells time. And sure enough, when I went to breakfast on Monday, September 16, 1996, a lone present waited for me at my seat at the table; I convinced my parents to let me stay up till 10PM so I’d have time after my volleyball game to properly look through my book, even though I’d been through it cover-to-cover countless times already in the shop.

Today I’m twice as old as I was then. My 28th birthday is my first birthday as a mother; the Burt Squirt, now six and a half months, naps in my lap as I write this. I’m not sure why my 14th birthday should stand apart in my thoughts from the 27 others, except that it highlights how different the world and I are now. For example:

• From June to January ‘96, I saw Hunchback four times at the same movie theater.
• And it was over a year between theatrical release and home video (we’re talking VHS).
• My career aspirations were to be a Disney animator.
• I participated in athletics at school.
• Flowing skirts, vests, head scarves, big hoop earrings, and bangles were wardrobe staples: yes, I believed I was a Gypsy at heart.
• I got crushes on fictional characters.

Erm…strike that last one. At the age of 28, married and a mother, I still get crushes on fictional characters (though typically not animated ones).

Come to think of it, even though I didn’t grow up and become an artist for Disney or any other animation studio, I doodle in the margins of my notebooks became a storyteller, which I think is what I truly wanted to do all along; at 14, I just hadn’t discovered through what medium. Writing (and Disney World) satisfies my wanderlust, so maybe I didn’t grow out of my Gypsy spirit, either.

I did kiss organized sports goodbye for good in ‘96, and at 28, my wardrobe bears no traces of my Gypsy phase-though not for fear of being nominated for What Not to Wear. No, I’ve moved on for more practical reasons: bangles and dangly earrings are dangerous for mommies!

It’s nice to think that if 14 year-old LR met 28 year-old LR, she’d recognize her.

And have a buddy to dress up like a Gypsy and ogle animated characters watch The Hunchback of Notre Dame with.

Reflections on a Wedding and the Morning After

You wake up on the morning of your wedding, and your first thought is to wonder whether it’s really called waking up when you didn’t sleep at all. Your head hurts because it’s past the time you usually sit drinking coffee while reading email, and your eyes screw shut at the prospect of putting in contacts. Since caffeine is, most definitely in order, you decide that yes, it’s called waking up whether you slept or not.

And then you throw up.

“Little Lisa always throws up on the first day of school,” says your dad, too loudly, and with an uncomfortable chuckle. (It’s not till later, when he’s walking you down the aisle and he suddenly ducks his head to avoid crying on camera, that you realize you’re his little girl, and it’s not an easy thing to give you away no matter how much he likes your fiancé.)

Since you threw up your breakfast and were too afraid of what might happen to your wedding gown if you ate one of the sandwiches provided for the wedding party, your stomach starts growling mid-way through the wedding ceremony, loud enough for your groom to hear. As he holds your hands, his shoulders quake with silent laughter.

You tilt your head in toward him and whisper, “I’m starving!”

“We get cake soon,” your groom whispers, giving your hands a squeeze.

But you really don’t get any cake, except for the traditional bite you feed each other at the reception, because talking with your mouth full is bad manners (even if it did endear you to your now-husband the first night you met him and spat popcorn on his leg) and you never get a break in conversation with the wedding guests.

The same conversation. Over and over. “Have you graduated yet? What are you going to do with an English lit degree? Where are you going on your honeymoon? Where will you be living?” For hours. Or at least it feels like hours.

It’s really just one.

One hour is a really long time when you threw up all your breakfast and you’re squeezed into a corset, hoop skirt, and wedding dress, starving and wondering when you turned into Scarlett O’Hara. Would it be better if you swooned? The church gymnasium’s floor is hard, but all that tulle in your petticoat would make for a cushy landing. It would be just like you to faint at your wedding reception because you always throw up on the first day of school and your wedding day’s no exception.

A pro to being unconscious is that you won’t have to tell one more person that you have another semester of school left, and you won’t have to fight the urge to tell them, snarkily, that what you’re doing with that English lit degree is marrying a man with a real job, who will support you while you write short stories and novels about all the people you’ve ever known who have annoyed you — because you just can’t say that. They mean well, and they brought you such lovely presents. (Well, mostly they’re lovely presents. There was that one wealthy family who spent six whole dollars — you know because you returned them — on The Ugliest Fruit Bowls Ever Made, Even By Third Graders Making Pottery In Arts And Crafts. So maybe you can be snarky to those people.)

The con to swooning is that if you’re unconscious, you won’t remember your reception. (Not that you remember much anyway, you discover after your honeymoon when you watch the wedding video with your husband and do a double take: “There was a fruit and cheese table?!” And the only thing you remember about the ceremony is your stomach growling.)

By the time you’ve been pelted by birdseed on your way out of the church (because it’s apparently more moral to blind the bride and groom instead of toss rice which birds will eat and then explode) and are in your get-away vehicle, picking it out of your hair and pondering eating it, you’re not squealing in a pitch only dolphins can hear, “Ohmygoshwe’rereallymarried!” or saying in tremulous dulcet tones, “Let’s go make love,” but instead having your first marital spat: “You pick where we’re going to eat! No, you! No, you!”

(Daddy was so right to think of your first day of school. You’re still such a child. You both are.)

By the time you get to a restaurant, you’ve lost your appetite again. Because, well, you’re married and tonight you’re going to have sex.

And then you throw up.

“Birth control side effect,” you manage between dry heaves over the commode. (There was nothing but that one bite of wedding cake in your stomach, and that’s now floating, curd-like in the toilet water.) The pamphlet said you might experience some nausea.

When you’re finished throwing up, you turn to your white-faced husband, who is so not in the mood anymore, and looks unlikely ever to be again, after this first glimpse of you in the morning.

“And now we know how this particular birth control works,” you say, and turn on the shower petulantly.

You’d rather go back to bed, but the plane bound for your honeymoon leaves in a couple of hours, and you can’t miss the first day of school.

The End

I’m so glad I didn’t miss my first day in the school of marriage.  I never expected that we’d immediately be given a pop quiz on our commitment to each other “in sickness,” but it’s the unexpectedness of what’s come our way, and the way we’ve taken each other by the hand and met it, that makes marriage the best, and most fun, education I’ve ever received.  I can’t imagine a better classmate, or, at times, a better teacher, than Mr. Burt.  I’m excited to see what we’ll learn together and teach each other in the next five years, and the next five after that, and the next five after that…

Even though there is certain to be more throwing up along the way.