Writer's Notebook: Oxford Wedding

The single folks arrived, too, conspicuous in their white collars and combed hair and black tuxedos and suits and bow ties hastily arranged beneath Adam’s apples, walking stiffly up the front steps, smiling uncertainly at everyone and wondering if there was anybody there they knew and where are they supposed to go next? They wandered around, their eyes searching for the flashes of color and whiffs of perfume that tell them there is a girl nearby who needs to be looked at and looked at good.

"The procession began…eight bridemaids
gliding down the aisle, one by one
in ribboned grace like swans
gliding effortlessly across a mirrored lake,
each clutching two fresh pink roses."

They have done their best to dress for the occasion—seersucker or linen or tuxedo or blazer was the norm, and at the first glimpse of a clutch of girls, the boys instinctively pushed out their chests, adjusted their ties and nervously smoothed their hair in some vague hope of at least getting a smile from one of them. The girls, meanwhile, clustered together like a football huddle and talked in rapid-fire about their corsages, dresses, makeup and nail polish. They did not notice the boys staring at them gape-mouthed, goggle-eyed.

The bride finally arrived and emerged from a sleek car, darted across the lawn and vanished inside the Isom house as gracefully as streams of colored light through a dark-filled room.

It is a day a bride dreams of her entire life, and a day which any groom is constantly in marvel of. It is like a fairy tale. Nothing can go wrong, or at least shouldn’t. Everything had been discussed, everything has been planned out, taken care of, organized down to the last movement and word and crumb to be eaten. The aunts and uncles made sure of that. For two days they came, broiled and baked in the stifling Mississippi heat to set everything up. When Saturday came, it was 111 degrees and when everyone arrived that night it had cooled to a tepid 105. The caterer arrived on time and the flower truck pulled up in the drive and unloaded streams of color the hot afternoon could not dim. The bride’s mother darted from room to room checking on the progress of the punch preparation, the flower placement, the status of the bridesmaid’s dresses.

As for us married folks who have been through all this before, we go mostly for the food. Well, that’s not entirely true. Weddings have booze, too. Unless you happen to be in a dry county down south, and then it gets trucked in or “snuck” in, as we say in Kentucky. I have rarely been to a wedding that did not have fine food, and this Oxford wedding was one for the record.

We married men found the groom hiding in a back corner of the back parlor and we descended upon him like vultures on a dying mule carcass in the desert. We smiled that smile only a married man's memory can enliven in us as we watched the young groom-to-be stand in jittered expectation of having to speak those words that will sentence him to married life. He smiled at us. He denied he was nervous, of course. Each of us had already had several whiskeys by this point and it was only a matter of time before the harassment would begin in earnest.

"The preacher got right down to business, and it was over before you knew it. It was simple, elegant, sacred, reverent. It is all that need be said of it."

One of us looked down at the groom’s feet and smiled. “Yup”, he estimated, turning and tilting his head sideways. “Yer ankles should fit a nice BIG ball an’ chain!" After a few more exchanges and humorous jabs, we pulled out the heavy artillery and went on the attack.“Take my advice, son,” another man said, placing his hand on his shoulder in fatherly fashion and looking expectantly around the room. And then he yelled “RUN!” loud enough to make people out in the yard jump and wonder where the wreck was. Even the minister took a playful moment to dig his claws into the groom's skin just enough to make him bleed. In the back hallway after the ceremony had concluded, he clutched the groom's arm and whispered, “I haven’t signed the paper yet…" he said, his voice pumped up with feigned urgency and dread. "There’s still time to change your mind!”

We all laughed. Laughed hard enough, some of the old men wet their trousers. The groom even laughed. It's what men do to other men to welcome them into the club we call "the old married men club". Of course, the groom knew we were kidding. Or at least, I hope he did.

We all approved of the match years before we even knew they were thinking about getting married. Most of us had watched these two grow closer since the days when they met as students at Ole Miss and long before the willful groom created his signature publication, Y’all Magazine. The personalities and dreams and passions that brought the bride and groom to last Saturday night at Isom House could not help but pull the rest of us along with them as they went. Friends stick together, and in the South, that's high cotton. For these two, filled with so much optimism and energy of youth, it was not only a beginning of a life together, but it was an illumination of two souls that gleamed as powerful and as brightly as if they had reached up and plucked a piece of the sun from the sky and brought it down for the rest of us to admire.

Soon, we were asked to move outside to the back garden and take our seats. The heat had mercifully subsided and become drier, with a light breeze as if God himself smiled down on the proceeding. A string quartet played Tchaikovsky and Pachelbel. The procession began…eight bridesmaids glided down the aisle one by one in ribboned grace like swans gliding effortlessly across a mirrored lake, each clutching two fresh pink roses. In the south the older tradition holds that grooms ask their father to be their best man, and there they stood—father and son, each a monument and a care to each other, standing next to the preacher who held his prayer book in the sweltering summer heat waiting for the bride. Soon, she appeared. Necks craned and audible whispers and smiles rippled through the crowd seated on the lawn. She came forward with her father on her arm, tall and resplendent in her long-trained white satin gown, smiling brightly, clutching a bouquet of white and pink roses.

The preacher got right down to business, and it was over before you knew it. It was simple, elegant, sacred, reverent. It is all that need be said of it.

The festivities lasted well into the night. A Dixieland band played and people danced. Colonel Reb appeared and we all had our pictures taken with the famous mascot of Ole Miss. People talked and laughed and formed new friendships and they drank and made merry. Later in the evening as the clock crept toward midnight and the moon rose over the standing pines, when all the drink had been drunk, food had been eaten, dances danced and goodbyes said, we stepped out the front door and into the night and on with our lives.

The moon came up over a grove of oak and dogwood trees. A small group of us who probably had no business walking anywhere, made the three-block stumble to St. Peter’s Cemetery on the other side of North Lamar Street. There, in a oak and vine bemused grave at the bottom of the hill lay William Faulkner and his wife Estelle Oldham. On a June afternoon in 1929, they had their own Oxford wedding at the College Hill Presbyterian Church a short distance away. We all sat in the dark on the wall around the grave and gazed at the moon and talked of it, talked of the man at our feet and of his wedding day and of our own, each wedding a monument of memory.

The moon was higher now, slowly creeping over the tall pines and the darkened, mossy headstones leaning in the shadowed night. A crest of flowers leaned against the stone monument on which was inscribed simply: FAULKNER. The day was spent, the journey done. The heat of the day was gone, the alcohol had done its work in the bloodstream. We sat quiet for some time, thinking of the two whom that night married each other. Whoever we were before and wherever our individual destinies lay, we all parted that festive Saturday evening richer for having been there. We walked away into the night, each a vessel of memory, a witness to a kind of history.

14 August 2007	"OXFORD WEDDING"
	In the small, southern town of Oxford, Mississippi, two people were married last Saturday night. It is a simple statement, one that in no way reveals the significance and meaning of what really took place on that warm, summer evening under the magnolias in the back garden of a home on Jefferson Avenue, just off the square. If you are from the South and were fortunate enough to be there, you would know immediately that you were at the center of the universe, because weddings in the rural South are at the center of the society. They are the glue that bonds not just two young hearts in love, but entire families and fortunes and futures and vast networks of friendships. But if you weren’t there, and you aren’t familiar with a southern wedding or unless someone explained them to you, you would probably never know what took place, who had been there, how simple and beautiful the ceremony was, or why it was such an event to be remembered. It happened at the Isom House, a two-story, antebellum home built in 1835 by Dr. Thomas Dudley Isom (1816-1902), the first permanent settler in Oxford , and located within eyeshot of the Oxford courthouse only two blocks away. Isom was a delegate to the Convention of Secession in 1860, and later joined the confederate army and served at the Battle of Shiloh. The house is rumored to be the building which William Faulkner used as the model for the house of Emily Grierson in his famous short story “A Rose for Emily”. It is a rumor still in question, but discounted by most scholars. Standing in the back garden, you are surrounded by fragrant magnolias, flowering crepe myrtle, and sprawling, gnarled oak trees almost as old as the house itself. The house lies less than a half mile from Rowan Oak (William Faulkner’s antebellum home on Old Taylor Road) and only three blocks from St. Peter’s Cemetery where Faulkner’s physical remains lie buried. Everything about Oxford reeks of Faulkner and books and writers and southern gothic. The feeling hangs in the air suspended like woodsmoke—you cannot help breathe it in or taste in the town’s architecture, its residents, its food or its history. Oxford is the place where southern literature begins and ends. And it was here they got married. Southern weddings are glorious things to behold, and this one was even more so. Famous people came, not so famous people came, parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces and nephews, children, women in hats and bows and ribbons and silk came, rushing quickly from their cars inside the house to escape the wilting 105 degree heat that had oppressed the town for nearly a week. Among those who were there were many of the staff and employees of Y’all Magazine—the magazine which the groom founded five years ago and which, through spit and sweat and a fair bit of elbow grease, has risen to become a successful national publication. All of us were there—journalists, authors, writers, copy editors, bureau chiefs, art directors, graphic designers, accountants, production folks, photographers, illustrators, and many more. Famous writers came and met each other for the first time, each an admirer of the next, each humbled and happy to be there and to exchange phone numbers and Christmas card addresses with someone as famous as people say they were themselves.
		The single folks arrived, too, conspicuous in their white collars and combed hair and black tuxedos and suits and bow ties hastily arranged beneath Adam’s apples, walking stiffly up the front steps, smiling uncertainly at everyone and wondering if there was anybody there they knew and where are they supposed to go next? They wandered around, their eyes searching for the flashes of color and whiffs of perfume that tell them there is a girl nearby who needs to be looked at and looked at good.
	"The procession began…eight bridemaids gliding down the aisle, one by one in ribboned grace like swans gliding effortlessly across a mirrored lake, each clutching two fresh pink roses."
	They have done their best to dress for the occasion—seersucker or linen or tuxedo or blazer was the norm, and at the first glimpse of a clutch of girls, the boys instinctively pushed out their chests, adjusted their ties and nervously smoothed their hair in some vague hope of at least getting a smile from one of them. The girls, meanwhile, clustered together like a football huddle and talked in rapid-fire about their corsages, dresses, makeup and nail polish. They did not notice the boys staring at them gape-mouthed, goggle-eyed. The bride finally arrived and emerged from a sleek car, darted across the lawn and vanished inside the Isom house as gracefully as streams of colored light through a dark-filled room. It is a day a bride dreams of her entire life, and a day which any groom is constantly in marvel of. It is like a fairy tale. Nothing can go wrong, or at least shouldn’t. Everything had been discussed, everything has been planned out, taken care of, organized down to the last movement and word and crumb to be eaten. The aunts and uncles made sure of that. For two days they came, broiled and baked in the stifling Mississippi heat to set everything up. When Saturday came, it was 111 degrees and when everyone arrived that night it had cooled to a tepid 105. The caterer arrived on time and the flower truck pulled up in the drive and unloaded streams of color the hot afternoon could not dim. The bride’s mother darted from room to room checking on the progress of the punch preparation, the flower placement, the status of the bridesmaid’s dresses. As for us married folks who have been through all this before, we go mostly for the food. Well, that’s not entirely true. Weddings have booze, too. Unless you happen to be in a dry county down south, and then it gets trucked in or “snuck” in, as we say in Kentucky. I have rarely been to a wedding that did not have fine food, and this Oxford wedding was one for the record. We married men found the groom hiding in a back corner of the back parlor and we descended upon him like vultures on a dying mule carcass in the desert. We smiled that smile only a married man's memory can enliven in us as we watched the young groom-to-be stand in jittered expectation of having to speak those words that will sentence him to married life. He smiled at us. He denied he was nervous, of course. Each of us had already had several whiskeys by this point and it was only a matter of time before the harassment would begin in earnest.
	"The preacher got right down to business, and it was over before you knew it. It was simple, elegant, sacred, reverent. It is all that need be said of it."	.
	One of us looked down at the groom’s feet and smiled. “Yup”, he estimated, turning and tilting his head sideways. “Yer ankles should fit a nice BIG ball an’ chain!" After a few more exchanges and humorous jabs, we pulled out the heavy artillery and went on the attack.“Take my advice, son,” another man said, placing his hand on his shoulder in fatherly fashion and looking expectantly around the room. And then he yelled “RUN!” loud enough to make people out in the yard jump and wonder where the wreck was. Even the minister took a playful moment to dig his claws into the groom's skin just enough to make him bleed. In the back hallway after the ceremony had concluded, he clutched the groom's arm and whispered, “I haven’t signed the paper yet…" he said, his voice pumped up with feigned urgency and dread. "There’s still time to change your mind!” We all laughed. Laughed hard enough, some of the old men wet their trousers. The groom even laughed. It's what men do to other men to welcome them into the club we call "the old married men club". Of course, the groom knew we were kidding. Or at least, I hope he did. We all approved of the match years before we even knew they were thinking about getting married. Most of us had watched these two grow closer since the days when they met as students at Ole Miss and long before the willful groom created his signature publication, Y’all Magazine. The personalities and dreams and passions that brought the bride and groom to last Saturday night at Isom House could not help but pull the rest of us along with them as they went. Friends stick together, and in the South, that's high cotton. For these two, filled with so much optimism and energy of youth, it was not only a beginning of a life together, but it was an illumination of two souls that gleamed as powerful and as brightly as if they had reached up and plucked a piece of the sun from the sky and brought it down for the rest of us to admire. Soon, we were asked to move outside to the back garden and take our seats. The heat had mercifully subsided and become drier, with a light breeze as if God himself smiled down on the proceeding. A string quartet played Tchaikovsky and Pachelbel. The procession began…eight bridesmaids glided down the aisle one by one in ribboned grace like swans gliding effortlessly across a mirrored lake, each clutching two fresh pink roses. In the south the older tradition holds that grooms ask their father to be their best man, and there they stood—father and son, each a monument and a care to each other, standing next to the preacher who held his prayer book in the sweltering summer heat waiting for the bride. Soon, she appeared. Necks craned and audible whispers and smiles rippled through the crowd seated on the lawn. She came forward with her father on her arm, tall and resplendent in her long-trained white satin gown, smiling brightly, clutching a bouquet of white and pink roses. The preacher got right down to business, and it was over before you knew it. It was simple, elegant, sacred, reverent. It is all that need be said of it. The festivities lasted well into the night. A Dixieland band played and people danced. Colonel Reb appeared and we all had our pictures taken with the famous mascot of Ole Miss. People talked and laughed and formed new friendships and they drank and made merry. Later in the evening as the clock crept toward midnight and the moon rose over the standing pines, when all the drink had been drunk, food had been eaten, dances danced and goodbyes said, we stepped out the front door and into the night and on with our lives. The moon came up over a grove of oak and dogwood trees. A small group of us who probably had no business walking anywhere, made the three-block stumble to St. Peter’s Cemetery on the other side of North Lamar Street. There, in a oak and vine bemused grave at the bottom of the hill lay William Faulkner and his wife Estelle Oldham. On a June afternoon in 1929, they had their own Oxford wedding at the College Hill Presbyterian Church a short distance away. We all sat in the dark on the wall around the grave and gazed at the moon and talked of it, talked of the man at our feet and of his wedding day and of our own, each wedding a monument of memory. The moon was higher now, slowly creeping over the tall pines and the darkened, mossy headstones leaning in the shadowed night. A crest of flowers leaned against the stone monument on which was inscribed simply: FAULKNER. The day was spent, the journey done. The heat of the day was gone, the alcohol had done its work in the bloodstream. We sat quiet for some time, thinking of the two whom that night married each other. Whoever we were before and wherever our individual destinies lay, we all parted that festive Saturday evening richer for having been there. We walked away into the night, each a vessel of memory, a witness to a kind of history.
	William Faulkner's grave St. Peter's Cemetery, Oxford
	The many who attended will probably never meet again. Others will simply carry on as if doing business as usual. That's the way it goes. Still others, who comprehend what had happened there, will begin adventures afresh with new friends, as if each was a new country to be discovered and explored. Those of us who came away with this kind of bounty have that young southern bride and groom to thank, for this is the other great legacy they leave us from that Oxford evening, one that often goes unseen and largely unnoticed amid the heat and gushing smiles and dancing and flowers and ribbons and the soft breezes that rustle through the magnolias in the Mississippi night.