Even though the Calgary Flames did not win last night, forcing a sixth game on Saturday night, they did not rain on my parade. As C.C. said, “Nothing is morning important than our wedding celebration. Hockey, smockey!”

Okay. So he didn’t really say that, but I know he was thinking it, as were all the other ardent and vocal Flames fans gathered at a local pub last night to watch the game and to begin the wedding celebrations! When I popped in after C.C. and I met with the marriage commissioner, they were completely immersed in the game, sharing laughter and jokes about the imminent end of C.C.’s single status.

Earlier in the day, Alexis and I went with Natalie Winsa, our wedding angel, to do a site visit at Bench 1775, the winery where the wedding will be held tomorrow. Conscious of the weather forecast, we talked about Plan B. None of them all that enticing until Natalie said, what about the entranceway to the Tasting Room?

and voila! A beautiful Plan B, should it be needed.

I’m confident it won’t be. The forecast for today was all showery and cloudy. Yet, here I sit at my writing place, looking out at the unruffled waters of the lake. No wind and few clouds above.

Funny how weather is not all that important to me, until I plan an outdoor wedding. Like so many things in life, the context comes when my plans include things I cannot control, but have an impact on what I’m doing.

Thing is, the weather won’t make our day tomorrow great. We will. All of us gathered together to celebrate love and marriage, family ties and friendship.

And yes, I am excited!

One more day. There’s a party tonight, an Open House C.C and I are hosting here at Therapy Vineyards where we’re staying. The amazing Kasey Alladin is catering, just as he will be at the wedding. While we are either out on the golf course, or touring the vineyards, Natalie and Kasey will be busy setting up the party and laying out the food to welcome us upon our return.

Therapy Guest House is almost full with just one more couple to arrive from New York today. Last night, C.C.’s son and daughter arrived as did dear friends from Calgary. We stayed up late, chatting and sharing a glass of wine and a few sips of Therapy’s incomparable Freudified wine, laughing and talking and telling stories on each other. These are people who have been in our lives for a long, long time. They hold special places in our hearts and journey. Earlier in the afternoon, a couple, along with a friend who had driven in from Calgary, stopped by for a late afternoon visit. We sat on the deck, soaked up the view and the ambience of the place, and gave thanks.

As I check over my lists, tick off more and more To Do’s as DONE, I am grateful.

For C.C., our family and friends who have made this weekend so special.

Gratitude flows all around and I breathe deeply.

Yes, this is life. This is Love. This is beauty.

This is my last post before the wedding tomorrow. How exciting is that!

See you on the other side of marriage.

Much love to all and deep gratitude for your well-wishes and support and encouragement and above all, Love.

And so it begins.

Alexis and I are off to wine country today to get everything in order for the wedding on Saturday. C.C. and my youngest daughter and her boyfriend arrive tomorrow night, as does a friend who is our MC. On Thursday, the four of them will be playing golf while Alexis and I enjoy the last minute visits to the florists and other suppliers for the wedding. Tomorrow is our spa day. Our day to simply savour being amongst the vines, beside the lake, in the sun.

Oh! And I do have to pick up the wedding license!

We had planned on leaving yesterday, but it wasn’t until 4pm yesterday that I finally packed up the last tub of paraphernalia for the wedding, swept out my studio and said, I’m done.

Plus, I still had to pick up my dress from the dress-makers where I’d taken it to have it lined. The fabric is gorgeous but it needed softening on the inside!

It is beautiful, my dress. My lovely and generous friend WC spent countless hours creating and cutting and sewing and unsewing and sewing again to get it just so. For me, every stitch in the skirt speaks of friendship. It is a reminder of how we sew together our different perspectives, our varying experiences and thread together a tapestry of caring and love that lifts and supports us in our lives. It speaks of our human desire to be connected, to be part of something, giving the best of what we have and know to create something out of nothing. Like sewing, friendship is kind of like magic to me. From a flat piece of fabric, wondrous things appear that clothe us in beauty!

The fabric for my skirt is from India, a hand-embroidered silk that whispers stories of elephant rides and gardens bursting with the brilliant hues of marigolds and fuschia and passion flowers and birds flitting amongst the branches of a heavily laden lemon tree.

My mother is from India. She is too frail to make the wedding so my dress is in honour of her. It also makes me think of Ireland where my father is from.  When I took it into the dress-maker to have it lined, she suggested adding a small shawl around the neck of my blouse made out of the same fabric as the skirt. It makes me think of the sash an Irish dancer wears to honour her clan. The skirt swishes and sways as if moved by the music of a distant fiddle playing a jig.

Yup. I’m ready.

Everything is done. Everything is ready. All packed up. All set to go.

C.C. is organizing the caravan of cars that will help us get all the boxes and bins to the vineyard. My car today will be filled with two sets of golf clubs, his suitcase, Alexis’ and mine as well as anything else I can fit in!

On Thursday, his son and daughter arrive with their significant others as do my two sisters and one of their husbands and several other friends. Friday, 24 of us are on a wine tour while several others will be teeing off for another round of golf with C.C.

And then, Saturday.

My friend Ula asked me yesterday if I had figured out where everyone would dress and how we’d get to the winery where the wedding is being held.

Oops.

Not yet!

But, I’ve still got four and a half days… 🙂

And oh my. Look at the time!

Gotta go.

I need to finish packing. Last night C.C. looked at the pile of clothes  on the loveseat in our bedroom that I’d set out to take with me and suggested I might want to cull it a bit. “You’re only gone a week,” he said, “Not a month.”

Oh? Right.

I don’t need 7 pair of pants, 5 skirts, 8 blouses and 3 sweaters.

But what about the 10 pair of shoes?

I need each one of them, don’t I? Just in case. 🙂

Thank you everyone for the beautiful and heart-warming well-wishes. I carry you and your loving words with me in my heart.

Namaste.

My daughters asked me last night at dinner when I was going to have my meltdown before the wedding.

I don’t have meltdowns, I told them.

And my youngest daughter looked at me with that look of disbelief daughters do so well and asked, “Really mom? What about that night you landed in hospital?”

Children have such unforgiving memories of their parents sometimes.

The night in question was just after I had moved back to Calgary, after the man whose lies and manipulations that almost killed me had sent him to jail.

After a year and a bit in prison, The Parole Board had let me know of his release to a half-way house in Calgary. I was hyper conscious of my surroundings. Working with a security consultant I was, ‘target-hardening’ my home and my life so that we could be safe and live with peace of mind.

But, the fear existed. It lived on the periphery of my thinking, a constant niggling at my mind to ‘be aware’ of everything going on around me. One evening, I had gone to a friend’s for dinner and he had fed me his world famous peach martini’s. I had known this man for many years but on this night, he informed me of his long time affection for me.

I didn’t feel the same way about him and didn’t want to hurt his feelings so I said nothing. He took my silence as an invitation and tried to kiss me.

And that’s when my walls came tumbling down.

I did not want to be kissed. I did not want to be up close and personal with a man. I did not want a man. Period.

Fortunately, he got the message, backed off and walked me home.

Problem was, the dam had burst and I couldn’t get myself together. I cried and shivered and at one point sat on the grass and sobbed. It was as though, after two years of having to deal with not just the spectre of ‘the bad man’ somewhere on the horizon but also my daughters’ fear of his presence coming back into our lives, and my own work of healing the woundedness within me, I broke wide open and let go.

I let go of holding myself and all of it together.

I let go of being strong.

I let go of being the one with all the answers.

I broke.

When my friend got me home I was a mess. Concerned for my well-being, he called 9-1-1. When my address came up in their database, they found my file flagged because of the ‘bad man’s’ release from prison. Respond immediately.When the ambulance and police arrived. I remember continually repeating, “I can’t keep my daughters safe.  I can’t keep my daughters safe.”

When they checked their database further, they too grew concerned.

And therein lay the challenge. My fears were real. I wasn’t imagining them or making them up. They were real and I had been trying to pretend that while I knew they were real, I was handling it all.

In my desire to protect my daughters from my fears, I had been holding them in the container of, “I need to do everything I can to keep myself and the girls safe. I can’t predict or control what he will do. I can only take care of us”.

I had done everything to ‘target harden’ our lives. It was my heart that was the problem.

It was broken and I had been carrying the burden of its brokenness alone. I was tired.

When my friend tried to kiss me, my fear of letting down my guard, of letting myself feel again broke through.

It was shortly after that my beautiful friend NR went to Choices and invited me to go too. Thanks to her, the deep and lasting healing of my heart, and my family, began in earnest.

Daughters’ memories are long though. That evening doesn’t resonate in my memory. I only think of it when one of them mentions it — and usually they only speak of it in context to their fears of my falling apart.

Daughters count on the strength and courage of their mothers. They count on them to always be there. To be witness to their daughters’ tears and fears and pain and sorrows, and the good times too.

And we are, but what we don’t show our daughters is how much we carry their tears and fears and pains and sorrows. We don’t show them how our hearts break when theirs are broken. How are arms ache when theirs are left holding nothing but air after a love gone wrong or a dream shattered.

We show our daughters our strength and seldom our moments of weakness.

On that night long ago, I couldn’t hold it together any longer. I let it go. And in the letting go my healing began in earnest and the transformation of the pain into loving and forgiving myself began.

For my daughters, that night has not been transformed into the seminal moment where I saw clearly I had to let go. It remains in their memories as the night mom fell apart.

I am getting married on Saturday. My heart is bursting wide open with joy and love and feeling safe and feeling embraced by this man whom I trust and cherish and know loves and cherishes me.

I’m not planning a meltdown before Saturday. There’s no need because in marrying C.C., in stepping whole-heartedly into our life together, I have nothing to fear. My heart is strong and I am safe.

http://www.johnodonohue.com/to-bless-the-space-between-us

I got caught up in all things wedding related this morning. Checking my lists. Creating a poster. And re-checking my lists again.

Which means, I didn’t get to writing my blog this morning.

Instead, I share this beautiful poem from John O’Donahue which the lovely Maureen Doallas of Writing without Paper shared with me awhile ago.

May it stir your heart and set your dreams a-fluttering as it does mine.

To Bless The Space Between Us

“For Equilibrium, a Blessing:
Like the joy of the sea coming home to shore,
May the relief of laughter rinse through your soul.

As the wind loves to call things to dance,
May your gravity be lightened by grace.

Like the dignity of moonlight restoring the earth,
May your thoughts incline with reverence and respect.

As water takes whatever shape it is in,
So free may you be about who you become.

As silence smiles on the other side of what’s said,
May your sense of irony bring perspective.

As time remains free of all that it frames,
May your mind stay clear of all it names.

May your prayer of listening deepen enough
to hear in the depths the laughter of god.”
― John O’Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings