The great thing about getting married at a little-known park a few blocks from your house is that you can go there anytime you like and it will still be your wedding place. Churches are pretty, but 10,000 people might get married there in its lifetime and they will go there every Sunday and the industrial Berber carpet and padded chairs will forget you were ever there in all the traffic—-if such things can retain memories at all.  But with a park, the chances of anyone else getting married in that exact same sandy, ant infested patch of Bermuda grass that you did are very slim. The trees and earth, even in their winter slumber, will remember you and will secretly belong to that moment forever.

Which is why last night, on the date marking our second month of marriage, we walked together to the park. We exchanged lace and suits for puffy down coats and hats, but I had stuffed my grandma’s wedding handkerchief in my pocket—-a little token that I had with me walking down the aisle in October. When we got to the place, we split up and he took his spot beneath the trees and I came down the hill in the dark, white lace handkerchief draped humorously over my green stocking cap. The park was silent and dark and geese squawked somewhere out of sight. Nothing hinted of a windy, warm October afternoon 2 months ago, but in the silence I could imagine the red and cream paper lanterns swaying in the trees, sweet, sad fiddle music and the rows of smiling people watching my dad and I make our way up the bumpy runner. Dan would be waiting for me then, dressed in a sandy suit, untidy Dennis the Menace hair gleaming like the halo of a 6 year old in a Christmas play. Tears streamed from his ice-blue eyes and his smile radiated with every ounce of happiness a person could contain. Our pastor’s son would preside with words of wisdom that we would repeat, hardly hearing them….

I was still only halfway down our darkened “aisle” before Present Dan, at the altar spot, reminded me that I needed to trip a little bit on the invisible runner if we were going to make this legit. (Hurrah for being eternally ungraceful!) So after an over-dramatic stumble, I walked up to my husband of 2 months and we happily skipped all the ceremony bits we could barely recall. Flipping the handkerchief up, he went straight to the part where he could kiss the bride, with only geese and raccoons to cluck if it went overlong.

We stood there in the frigid December air for what seemed like ages. The park shelter that once held a wedding party was once again dirty and inhabited by the brown paper bags of hobos’ empty whiskey bottles. The small patch of forest that had walled the place into seclusion had a gash cut into it by a newly finished road that let in ambulance sirens from the hospital across the river. The stupid neon sewer pipes from the McLean/Central intersection pierced the once tree-lined horizon like the tacky skyline of a Star Trek planet. The grass where we stood was dead, but then, it was dead when we got married too. We had changed in the past 2 months, but not as much as our surroundings it seemed. Still, it was our spot, and with or without an overpaid videographer, I’m sure I’ll remember how it looked that day forever.

*

We slowly walked back down the aisle, extremities half-frozen and ready for the warmth of apartment and bed. Halfway home, we passed Dan’s old apartment complex and a part of me still twinged with the old familiar fear that he might have to go back to that place and leave me for the night—-but we kept walking. Christmas lights turned unremarkable Craftsman bungalows into fairytale cottages and we longed for each one as we passed. At 11:00 we reached the front steps and the cat greeted us noisily as we locked the front door. We brushed our teeth and fell into bed with the devotional book my mom gave us. Between the dishes and tacos, French movies, weird British sodas and long walks, that night encompassed married life as we had hoped it would all the months prior to October 2nd, 2010.

***

Admittedly, two months is hardly a landmark, and today only marks our first year together. Still, something tells me it’s a good idea to stockpile memories in writing why they are still fresh, and gauging from the length of this post, I’d say they are ripe for the picking. Marriages are a bit like parks, after all, and we will go through winters and the color will leave the world for a bit. But when we’re standing together in the dark and cold, we can still walk to that patch of grass in a half-forgotten park where once upon a time, on a golden Autumn day, two stories ended and one story began, “And they lived….” And the earth will be there to help us remember.