Spotlight on History
Married under quarantine in a field off Route 700. And it was perfect.
I had never expected to be a father, much less father of the groom.
By Roger Di Paolo
My son got married recently.
It wasn’t the wedding he and his bride had planned.
Like so many newlyweds of 2020, their dream wedding was one of the collateral victims of coronavirus. Their venue was canceled once the sheltering-in-place guidelines were issued. It didn’t matter that they had invited 150 guests, ordered a cake, hired a deejay and photographer and had outfitted 12 attendants. None of that was a match for the events that have transformed our lives.
With the determination and resilience of youth, they decided to proceed with beginning married life on the date they had chosen months ago. This was no time for insisting on perfection.
So that’s how we found ourselves — a dozen or so, immediate family only — in the middle of a pasture on a farm along Route 700 near Hiram, braving winds and temperatures in the 40s, thankful that the freak snowfall of the day before had melted, witnessing two people we love immensely becoming husband and wife.
We were joined by two wedding crashers: a pair of horses who peered over the fence from the farm next door.
It was great.
The bride’s carefully chosen dress was in quarantine purgatory in Pittsburgh, so she wore a lacy white mini-dress with flowing sleeves that reminded me of the 1960s. She carried a bouquet of flowers from Giant Eagle. Her groom wore khakis, a blue dress shirt and tie.
The officiant was a family friend, a minister who has known my son since he was a toddler.
I didn’t cry. I had promised myself I wouldn’t be like my Mom, who had thrown herself in my arms and burst into tears in the receiving line after I was married 35 years ago. Or my Dad’s mother, who wailed like a newly bereaved Italian widow throughout my parents’ ceremony over 70 years ago.
Nope, I kept my composure during the ceremony, but I was a tearful hot mess when I wrote out a wedding card an hour or two earlier — 40 years of meeting newspaper deadlines makes me do my best work under pressure — and started weeping as soon as I completed the first sentence. There were gobs of soaked Kleenex by the time I finished the card.
I became a first-time father when I was nearly 40 and had all but given up hope of that ever happening, much less ever being father of the groom. As I wrote out the card in the home where my son’s nursery once was located, I was overwhelmed with memories of the infant who decided early on that he was a nocturnal creature, the toddler who smiled automatically whenever he saw me with a camera, the little one who spent hours watching the same Winnie the Pooh video (curling into my side whenever the dreaded Heffalumps and Woozles appeared), the curious 3-year-old who consoled me as I wept watching Princess Diana’s funeral, the elementary school student who enjoyed watching cartoons with me until the school bus came.
My son is blessed with a sense of resilience and serenity that isn’t part of my DNA. When the newspaper I worked for went to morning publication, he took it in stride that I wouldn’t be home every night, and we looked forward to summers when we could enjoy days together. When his mother divorced me, transforming our lives, he shared my sadness but coped better than I did. I was grateful for shared custody; we became Solo Dad and the Road Dog, substituting one-on-one excursions for annual vacations and cruises and having almost as much fun. We made do as I adjusted to living on half-salary, exploring “exotic” items from the foreign foods section of Big Lots. He usually ate whatever I cooked and we were both grateful to survive.
As I watched him sharing the vows he had written — he called his bride his princess, which is quite true — I remembered other milestones, including the night he was born after less than two hours of labor. As a nurse was checking him over after delivery, his mother asked if he was OK — as in 10 fingers and 10 toes OK — and I told her, “No. He’s perfect.” My Mom, his beloved grandmother, frequently observed as we watched him grow into young adulthood, “We are so lucky to have him.”
Right on both counts. I’m prejudiced, of course, but I still think he is perfect. I never dealt with the Terrible Twos or teenaged angst, probably because he knew I wasn’t blessed with patience. And I never found myself going head-to-head with him like I did with my father; our time together was too precious. And Grandma was right (of course) about us being lucky to have him. Lucky beyond words.
He found a perfect match, too. My new daughter-in-law is free spirited and vivacious, an ideal counterpart for a mate who is prone to list-making and following the rules. He is her prince — that is apparent from the way she looks at him — and they radiate love and fun. And, to paraphrase Mom, we are so lucky to welcome this new addition to our family.
It was a beautiful wedding. The brief ceremony was a meaningful one uniting two special people, with enough ritual to satisfy my Catholic soul. Everybody enjoyed it, including the two horses, who made their presence audible a few times.
Congratulations, Brian and Carly. You had your big day after all.
Roger Di Paolo is a Portage County historian, the former editor of the Record-Courier and a member of The Portager board of advisers. His column, Spotlight on History, regularly appears in The Portager.
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