This I Vow

While the day of our wedding is etched in my brain in a thousand images, the actual ceremony went by pretty fast.

I remember the one, thick hair that was stuck on the rabbi's right eyeglass lens, and how I was dying to say something to him about it, or to stick my finger inside there and just pull it out myself.

I remember the bees that descended on us, attracted perhaps as much by the scent of the sunflowers that adorned our chuppah as they were by the sickly sweetness of the Manischewitz wine the rabbi held. As the bees came to rest on the rim of the cup, and on his hand, his hand trembled as he tried to shake them off, spilling wine on his suit and on his prayerbook which, incidentally, he tried to use to assassinate one of the bees, by closing it inside the holy book.

I remember the bees that got stuck inside my wife's veil, prompting many bee-in-your-bonnet jokes afterwards that we pretended were funny, because we're so good natured and we realize that even lame people who make embarrassing jokes and puns need to feel good about themselves sometimes too.

I remember our vows, because we wrote them together. We wrote them on little scraps of paper after sitting in my wife's PT Cruiser in a parking lot the night before our wedding, waiting for a tow truck that never came. The tow truck was supposed to come, they way tow trucks do. The tow truck was supposed to come take away a 1966 Volkswagen Beetle, dressed in a Pearl White paint job, with red, white and blue stripes and a "53" on the doors, trunk and engine cover. We had *ahem* borrowed it from a VW dealership that was using it out front to draw in customers. This was the vehicle that, on October 22, 2006, was supposed to take me and my wife away from our wedding ceremony, onto our honeymoon, and into the rest of our lives together.

But it didn't.

It broke down twice on the night before our wedding, and we waited for the tow truck until 11pm. Or was it 11:30pm? Or 1am? Fortunately, I can't remember anymore. The point is, the motherfuckers never came, and we ditched the Beetle with a sign on it saying, "PLEASE DO NOT TOW" because, as our luck would have had it, a tow truck probably would have come at some point to take it away-- to an impound lot. Not a desired outcome.

Our vows were cute, they were individual, they were "of us." People complained that they couldn't really hear them, but we were outdoors, and, like I said, they were "of us" and they were for us, so whether people heard or not, well, it doesn't really matter. We promised to hold each other's hands when we get scared, and we've gotten scared since-- and we've done as we promised. We promised to save the last rye chip in the bag of Chex Mix for the other, and we've done that. We promised to wait together for tow trucks in the middle of the night-- ah, topical humor...

But there wasn't all that traditional muck about sickness and in health, richer or poorer, all that. But it's implied. I thought about that this weekend as I was behind my wife, rubbing her back and holding her hair back as she projectile vomited into toilets in Pennsylvania and onto lawns in Maryland. Marrying someone is when you know you love them. When you hug someone who stinks of vomitus, well, that's when you're sure.

Through sickness and health.

Check.