(As requested) Background and Wedding (long) (1/2)
Settummanque, the blackeagle (waltoml@WKUVX1.WKU.EDU)
Sat, 21 Jan 1995 00:21:14 CST
Well...after several attempts at trying to share this without sounding
neither too sappy nor too matter-of-factly, my honies (and a pretty smart
computer person!) suggested that I do this slowly, and write an outline
first, and then go back and fill in all of the details. So, that's what I
did.
This posting is in two parts. The first part explains for the many of you
out there who we are and why we felt we needed to share our wedding day
with all of you. There are three "target groups" here, all of you are our
dear friends and we would have wanted you ALL (and your families) to come
and be a part of our exciting and well-waited-for day. The second part is
the day of the wedding, the wedding itself and our feelings about it all
on the way back home. Nope, no honeymoon....we both had to go to work the
next day, so that's being held off until later in the spring (after the
reception).
There are our many friends on the mailing list called Scouts-L. Many of
them have been with Jessica and I from the time we first posted to the
list. Others have been there when we too, needed shoulders to lean upon
(remember Jessica's awful training course, to which she wanted so bad to
quit Scouting alltogether? I couldn't convince her to stay around; it was
all of you and your comments, suggestions and yes, hugs that kept her
active as a Den Leader). I have answered many of your questions, shared
with you my Scouting background in some embarrassing and potentially
downright dangerous ways (remember the Klan luncheon meeting in which I
explained that "Scouting may not be for everyone"??), and at the same time
have learned so very much from each and every one of you.
There are our Brothers whom are on the Alpha Phi Omega list, called APO-L.
Jessica, at my urgings, pledged and I repledged alongside her two years
ago. You must understand something about my Brother Jessica: she has
NEVER been "picked" or "selected" to be a member of anything before she
became a APO candidate. Never. She was really self-concionsous about that
fact, and there were several nights where she wanted to drop out because
"they're not going to pick me, and I would never be able to look any of
them in the eyes again nor even to come on campus!" But she was one of the
best pledges in her class, and she even wanted to run for a office in the
coming semester. She wears her service pin proudly and recommends APO to
anyone wanting to be a part of something that "makes sense". I have been a
APO brother for years, and view APO as an extension of what I do as a
Scouter and member of my community. Service to others not only makes you
feel worthwhile, but is one of those things that no amount of money can
purchase.
Finally, there are Jessiann's friends from the list she co-runs with
Darrell, EAT-L (a food discussion and recipe exchange group). She found
the list to find recipes for her diabetic mother and found the discussions
lively, if not borderline strange, and lots of new things to try out on me.
Partially as a result of all of those NEW THINGS, I've moved up from a size
32 to a size 36 pants, and from a medium to a large shirt!! (that's not a
good thing, but as Jessica reminds me, "you're not that young man
anymore...you're getting grayer and balder and you have to spread
somewhere!")
There are many other folks that we've met from other forums, but this are
the places where we are found most every day, evening and weekend that
we're not doing a roadtrip someplace or visiting with friends (and even
then, we come back home and "read our mail" or "file our mail" so that we
can read it in the coming days).
My name is Mike Walton. I am 35 years old, but some folks say that I look
a lot younger. I've been involved in Scouting off and on for the past 27
years, as a youth member or as a adult leader, as a volunteer and for
almost four years as a Paraprofessional Executive and later as a
Neighborhood Executive with the Boy Scouts of America's Southeast Region.
I've served in a long list of roles, at the unit, District, local Council,
Area, Regional and National levels and I'm proud to be the person that
brought the Exploring Achievement Award and the Exploring Leadership Awards
to that program, among other personal achievements and accomplishments. I
was then and continue now to be extremely fortunate in the many people that
I've met, many of whom share with me their experiences and knowledge that
I return and pass onward to those Scouters in and out of Scouting who ask.
What I don't know or not sure about, I'll ask those whom do know, many of
which are longtime personal friends that go back to the days when they were
the Field Directors and the District Executives, and I was just some short
black kid with an extremely large Afro and an appetite for learning more
about Scouting.
I am the coffee drinker, the public speaker, the chocolate eater and the one
that watches CNN almost religiously during the day (when I'm home) and any
kind of public affairs program during the weekend (when I'm here). I have
three children: a girl, ten (Amanda), and two boys, aged eight (Andrew) and
six (Aaron). They live with their mother in eastern Kentucky. She divorced me
three plus years ago, shortly after I returned home from Desert Shield/Storm
military duties. leading some credence to the "call" "....Jody's got your
girl and gone".
Jessica was once Phyllis. She legally changed her name two years ago,
after using "Jessica" too much and as a result, everyone except her mother
knew her as Jessica or Jessi. She wanted to change it also because her
deceased father's name is Jesse and she was very close to her Dad. I call
her "Jessiann" because her middle name is Ann, and it sounds much more like
a girl's name than "Jessi". Jessi's 28 years old and have never been
involved in Scouting before she started to date me. We've been friends for
years, the kind of friend that you pass on the street and say "Hi! How's
classes? Who's that new guy you're seeing? We'll have to have lunch some
time...see you". She was one of several "VAXers" on our campus that used
their accounts for fun as well as for work. Jessica, because of her typing
skills, never wanted for food money...she would wait in the lobby of the
library until some student broke down and started complaining about having
to write this *explitive deleted* paper...and then she would "close in for
the kill" and offer to type and spellcheck it for $1 a page. The grateful
student would say "Sure!" and Jessica could hear cash registers in her head
as she typed each and every page with precision and speed (she's been
clocked at 87wpm, and her 10-key speed is somewhere in the upper 5,000
characters per minute range). She became a Den Leader and a member of the
unit's committee, and had fun with her Den... After a terrible first start,
she eventually finished college, earning a degree in Elementary Education.
She's the white one that does not like sweets at all, drinks Pepsi from the
glass instead of the can, and watches Black Entertainment Television
anytime that I don't have the set on someplace else. She's not into rap,
but rather mellow R&B instead. She's the person that loves fried chicken,
watermelon (which makes me physically ill just *smelling* it), and
dance steps. She's also the one that cries over silly commercials that touch
her heart, and the owner/provider/conforter of two twin kittens (it was
either kittens or babies, she said... ): Kelly and Kimi (short for
Kimberlea). They sleep in the evenings, not waiting for me to come home,
but rather for Jessi to open the door and say "Hi Honies", their cue to
come and "meeu" until she holds each one in her tiny hands.
Then they kiss her on her nose and her chin.
We chose to get married originally on April 29th (the past original date
was the 13th of May, but there was a conflict with one of the bridesmaids
and her graduation from college, so the date was moved back to April) at
2pm at Camp Crooked Creek, the Lincoln Heritage Council BSA's new facility
outside of Shepardsville, Kentucky. The location was chosen because of
both of our connections with Scouting, and because it was midway between
my parent's home in Radcliff, and Jessi's mother's home in Paris, Kentucky.
However, as the months started getting closer, and us giving up one by one
the "desires" and ways that we wanted to do the ceremony, the final straw
was broken by my former spouse. She refused to allow the children to
witness or attend our wedding, even during my visitation period with them
(I get the children once a month for a weekend visit).
So, on December 22nd, I had to decide what was best all the way around: to
pay close to two thousand dollars for a less-than perfect wedding, with
less than what we planned that day to be.
Or to pick a day, and do what Jessica wanted to do from the start: go to
the courthouse, get the license, go to a wedding chapel and get married and
save the money for a huge reception and honeymoon someplace *really nice
and special* ? I started out by X'ing out those days that we CANNOT get
married in. Not Christmas Day (my parents were married on that day). Not
New Years or the day before. Not anytime during the week, because we both
work and we haven't accuured enough days to take a personal day off. Not
on the 6th of January, because I have a speaking engagement with a local
Council.
The only day left in the year was the day after Christmas, December 26th.
That was the day I asked Jessica to "do it" on. "Not without my ring", she
reminded me. I promised her an engagement ring before we were to get
married, something that I have never done before (I was given an engagement
pen before, but that's it).
So, after getting children's toys and things, I bought her a "tenth of a
carrot" *hehehe* engagement ring. At that time, I think that she felt that
*finally*, we would be married. After all of the talking, the arguments
about stuffing cake in each other's faces, the going to the Bridal Fairs
and watching the models strol down in full-length dresses and Jessiann
stabbing me in the sides, saying "You're supposed to be looking at the
DRESSES, NOT the girls!" and "You like *that* one?". After all of the
silly songs I had to listen to and each time she hears a new one, "...we're
going to play that one at the wedding". After all of the "do we HAVE to
get married at a BOY SCOUT CAMP? I don't want to get married at some
run-down, stinky place with bugs and who-knows what there!"
Yep, it sank in when, after she went to three different stores to find a
pale beige dress ("It would be easy to find it...it's not one of those
current styles", she said before shopping), she called her mother from the
Mall, crying and sobbing about her "wedding being ruined" because she could
not find a nice dress somewhere.
She wanted to wear a beige pants suit and when I arrived at the mall to pick
up her ring, I told her "no pants. We're getting married and if I can't wear
jeans, you can't wear pants." She started to cry and I suggested that she
go to Penney's to get her dress.
"Shut up about Penney's!", she yelled at me. "Just because you think its
the best store in the world...jezz, I wish that you stop with the
loyalities to the places where you used to work at!"
"Just try it...I *know* that you'll find a dress you like there.", I
comforted her, at the same time moving her down the walkway toward the
store.
"I know that they won't have anything there. They NEVER do", Jessica
informed me. "The last time I tried to look for something in my size, they
didn't have it".
"Maybe this time, they will. You don't know until you try. Besides, don't
worry...you're getting married!", I told her. She got this silly grin on
her face, the one that she gets whenever she'd written a killer computer
program, or have finished reading a great book, or more recently, when she
finished her work at the bank three hours early and wants to go eat at our
regular "watering hole", O'Charlie's.
"Yeah....to my hon-nies", she singsonged as she held my shoulders with
her hands and leaned toward me. Then, she giggled as if she was still 14
or so, and she'd told her best friend that "he's cute".
She sent me looking for a new dress suit. After twenty minutes of looking
through racks of suits that would be appropriate for most Black men, you
know, the slick-haired ones with the goatee and thin mustache that appears
on the covers of Gentlemen's Quarterly or Ebony or YSB, I gave up looking.
I sat down instead, in a comfy highback chair in the doorway leading to the
men's dressing rooms. I must have waited there for another 20 minutes,
when Jessiann finally appeared, carrying a beige dress and a red blouse
and asking the sales associate if he'd seen a black man with a WordPerfect
baseball cap on his head in here. Of course, he hadn't (I was "hiding"),
so when she saw me sitting there in the chair, the first words she spoke
were "Gave up looking, huh? You were right...how did you know that I would
find a dress....the PERFECT dress....here in this store?"
I just knew. She keeps forgetting that I have faith. And a large amount
of patience.
"You couldn't find a suit here at all?", she asked and then she was
interruppted by the sales associate that helped her. She walked all the
way over to where we were from Women's, holding a beige blouse in her hands.
"I'm sorry, but perhaps this would work better. I found this in our back.
Which do you think?" Jessica was immediately impressed with this woman's
committment in making her look good on her wedding day. She introduced me
to the woman, and after thanking her over and over, she also took the
blouse.
I ended up wearing a dark blue suit with a silly looking tie that she had
bought me on my birthday and I refused to wear it because "conservative
Black men don't wear silly ties like that". I made a bet with Jessica that
she could not find 20 other Black men wearing a similarily designed tie.
I lost. So, I had to wear the tie.
We went home and spent the rest of the night...the night before our
wedding, fielding calls from my former wife, then my mother, then Jessica's
mother, then back to my mother, and finally again from Mildred. By then,
Jessica was tired of all of it and went to bed early. I stayed up and
started wrapping Christmas packages for my kids.
Jessi came back into the living room three hours later, and finished the
job I started. We talked while we were wrapping, labling and placing in a
larger box about the impact that the absense of both my parents _and_ my
children would be on this day. "Maybe we should call it all off and I go
back home", Jessiann spoke, finishing up a package.
"You're getting married in less than 24 hours to *me*, Jess. That's the
way its going to be. Everyone have had more than two years to get used to
us, to get used to you, and they all knew of our plans. We've been living
here, doing everything that a married couple does, even fighting like a
married couple does! The only thing we're lacking is what we're going to
have tommorrow night: a piece of paper that says that we can legally do
what we've been doing." I finished taping a card to a package and after
writing "Andrew" and "from Daddy and Jessica" on it, placed it inside the
box to go to the trunk. Then, placing the pen down, I told Jessi "I love
you. If I didn't want to marry you, I would have told you years ago. The
ONLY thing you need to worry about is what you're going to say to me and if
the minister looks like Slim Whitman!" We laughed, as I sang her the song
I recorded in one of the Hallmark chipcards, postmarked from the "Whitman
Music Company in Nashville, Tennessee".
"I love you deeeeerly, oh yess I doooooooo...
I love you deeeeerly, so why don't you....
be mined tonight....be mined tonight...."
(end of part one)
Settummanque!
--
Settummanque, the blackeagle... (MAJ) Mike L. Walton (
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