Picture Prefect

My mother’s purity prior to marriage has been well-documented.  A good Irish Catholic girl who went to a good Catholic school.  Church every Sunday.  Never mind that everyone else in her first family didn’t bother to dip their toes into the wild side, but instead dove in head first, arms spread, cheek-stinging smilingly into the deepest part of the bejeweled wild kingdom.

She met my father because someone wrote an article about up-and-coming career women in the big city newspaper that caught dad’s eye.  She was one of four women featured in this metropolitan paper.  They’d gone to the same university, were both involved in the Greek system, and both moved to the same city a state away after graduation.

Now, it’s no secret that dad had been around.  He always likes to remind us that women were just as sexually willing in the 50s as they are now, they just talked about it less.  He sowed, reaped, harvested, and sold his oats for great profit years before that article appeared in the newspaper.  He’d even been engaged once.  About a week after he put the wedding on hold, he bumped into the former fiancé while on a date with someone else.  She saw him across the room, strolled casually to him, slipped the ring in his pocket and said, “I believe this belongs to you.”

While they were dating, mom quit her job.  She took off for four months to tour Europe by foot and train with a friend, as they’d been planning to do for years.  Upon her return, dad had agreed to pick her up at the airport in New York and drive her to Florida, where her parents lived.  I imagine the conversation went something like this.

“You realize we’re going to have to stay in a hotel on the way to Florida, right?”  Dad might have said, hoping that he’d finally get into her pants.

“Really?  We can’t just drive straight through?”  Mom is still a bit geographically challenged.

“No.”

“Okay.  But I’m not going to sleep with you.”

“Of course not.”  Perhaps a silent sigh of resignation.

“And we’re not going to stay in the same room.”

“Naturally.  I’ve booked us adjoining rooms.”

“Oh, no!  No way, Jose!”

So, not only didn’t they have adjoining rooms, but mom insisted on being on a different floor.  If she hadn’t been feeling so frisky herself, she might have stayed in a hotel across town.

A few months later, they got engaged, much to the relief of my grandmother.  They were married in a nice, small Catholic ceremony and took off for their honeymoon that night.

There is a picture of mom and dad on the day after their wedding.  Mom’s smile is as big as I’ve ever seen it, despite the cold sore on her lip.  She and dad are both radiant, happy, and thrilled to be alive.

Once, my sister looked at that picture and said.  “Aw, look at that.  That’s a picture of mom right after she had her cherry popped.”