An Austin American Wedding

As they say in America, you can’t pick your family. And that saying never seemed truer to me than last month in Austin, Texas. That was where I attended the wedding of my step-nephew, Edward Swan to his lovely bride, Kristen.

But before describing the wedding, you’ve got to understand how I got there in the first place.

Following my mother’s death in 1993, my father was incredibly lonely. He kept it from me mostly, but I later found out how deeply, deeply sad he was to lose my mother.

In 1995, just 2 years later, Joe and I decided to move to Japan. I guess he anticipated the physical distance between us would equate to an emotional distance. But as far as I was concerned, nothing was farther from the truth. I was already living in New York, so I just saw it as taking a job a bit farther out of town.

Regardless, he had begun dating a woman by the name of Mary Ponce. I had met Mary during a visit to Texas and was ecstatic that my father had found someone to date. We had dinner at a Red Lobster and she seemed like a lovely person. Little did I know that Mary would become my stepmother 2 weeks after I arrived in Tokyo.

My father called me and we chatted about the weather, I told him about my new life in Japan and as we were about to hang up, he said, “hey Mart, guess what I went and did this weekend?” I expected him to say something like he got a new tool set or had entered the Publisher’s Clearing House Sweepstakes. He didn’t. He continued, “well, I went and got married.”

At first, I thought he was joking, and after I realized he wasn’t, I was dumbfounded. How could he have not mentioned this?

I tried to be as upbeat as possible, because I was truly happy for him, but I was upset. But not that he got married. I was upset that he didn’t tell me he was going to do it in the first place. No body asked me. But then, I remembered that this was about him, not me. He had picked a pretty fantastic woman the first time around and it looked like he had managed to do it again.

My father and Mary were happily married for six years. Mary helped him emerge from the darkness of my mother’s death and energized him as well. Mary knew how to handle my father much better than my mother ever could. Then, in 2001, two weeks before September 11th, my father’s life was taken by cancer.

And now, that brings me to 2008. I am attending the wedding of Mary’s grandson and she remains in my life longer than she was ever married to my father. And I have found myself with a wonderful, loving family that I never could have imagined being a part of a few years ago.

But the best part of the wedding was how “American” it was. And by that, I mean how wonderfully diverse the entire wedding was. Besides being truly happy for Edward and Kristen, I was happy to see the handsome Mexican-American groom with his beautiful blonde bride.

Edward’s parents, his mother Betsy (and my step-sister) and her African-American husband, Everett, were there and both, still clearly in love. There was the Everett’s family and of course, among the groomsman wearing tie-dye jackets was an Asian-American.

Both of Edward’s sisters, Erin and Nichole, who had both served in the U.S. Army were there looking just as beautiful as ever.

And of course, his gay step-uncle and his partner Joe were there as well. He and his entire family went out of their way to make us both feel as if we had been part of the family since the day we were born.

One of the best moments of the night was when Edward got up to speak and asked everyone to make sure they introduced themselves to at least one person they didn’t know, because they were all family and we may not see each other again for a long time.

It was a fantastic wedding and I couldn’t help but think of my father. Even though he wasn’t there to see it, he was there. Through me. Through Mary. And through the family that I never got to pick, but find myself happily a part of today.