Up to the Alter
Laura Sinclair
April 1, 2002
My parents' wedding portraits are blurry and accidental: emerging from the front door of my mother's childhood home, her face ducks down into his shoulder, the daisies in her hair brushing his eyes, which are as young as hers and laughing as if he can't believe his luck. She is small in the white prom dress bought quickly for this wedding day; he is slim in a Sunday-blue suit, tall and brave and sure he can carry her. My grandmother was young once, too, and her wedding portraits show her swivel-hipped in a long, lacy gown, my grandfather's strong arm anchoring her to the altar. In his dress blues, he is unafraid of anything, not yet knowing that his spirit will break and he will leave her and their daughters alone. A stark black cross hangs above their heads, like a brand or a burden. As for me, this is what I see of my wedding day: daring myself to walk down the empty aisle of a dark church, to retrace the steps I would have taken up to the very altar where my grandmother stood. Like my mother, I had ended the engagement; unlike my father, the boy I loved did not return in time, asking again to marry me. And like my mother and my grandfather, I bore up to the altar a brokenness I could not carry by myself and didn't know how to hold without a spouse. Sexuality and mental illness hold closely to each other in my family. My first insight into this came at 17, when my mother admitted that had it not been for their fulfilling sex life, my parents' marriage vows would have splintered long ago. At first I found this scandalous, then a relief: although my mother's mind wanders and fevers, my father is always able to find her and know her in the language-less intimacy of their bodies. It was also a relief that something had remained ...
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