Chapter 1

I made sure I was sitting on the aisle seat and of course I was right in the front row so when the music started I was easily able to watch her approach.

And to think, at first, all those months ago, I’d refused to consider the very idea of honoring Spot’s special day at all.

I was so glad I’d come to my senses. I would have missed the most important day of my daughter’s life and that’s something that I could never have lived with.

Spot looked radiant as she pranced down the aisle next to my husband, managing to make her bridalwear the envy of us all. I decided the front of Herbert’s trousers looked a little strained and at first I experienced a moment of jealousy, but I quickly realized that if he was sexually excited, he had good reasons to be.

Spot looked stunning and Steve, he insisted everyone call him Steve, was clearly quite the catch himself. He looked absolutely dapper in his tuxedo and tailcoat.

The tailcoat was my idea and I had to make multiple concessions to convince him to wear it, but I don’t regret pushing for it, not for an instant. It was simply the right decision.

Of course I knew I would be double guessing myself at the reception, but I (and I’m sure everyone else) expected that too. After all, if anyone can get away with changing her mind, it’s the mother of the bride.

I want to describe Spot, what she was wearing and some other important items of trivia, but I suppose I should introduce myself first.

My name is Marian Carter, I’m a 5 foot 2 inch tall, 47 year old mother of 4 and if I do say so myself, I look good. I still have my original dirty blonde hair (not my favorite color, but it’s all mine and I refuse to use dye), brown eyes and good skin.

My skin is what my husband talks about the most. He’s very proud of how well I’ve maintained it. It is creamy with very few freckles, healthy and vibrant, not pruned, leathery and wrinkled from too much exposure to the sun.

While some would call me rubenesque, I am very comfortable with my body these days. God saw fit to bless me with an overindulgence of curves, my husband would say, yet despite that, I only tip the scales at 120lbs.

As a young woman, I was taught to feel guilty, camouflage and conceal my proportions and I became so comfortable with doing so, that an unexpected benefit was that my skin was always protected.

I was always secretly pleased that my proportions were God given gifts that enabled me to bear children and bounce back afterwards (as well as to care for a newborn the way nature intended).

I have wide hips, so I never required a caesarian section, a large bosom, to provide the breast milk needed for a healthy child and the only feature of my body that caused me constant embarrassment until recently, was my caboose.

It is far larger than it has any business being, although diet and exercise never reduced its size or shape. I blame some sort of ancient Hispanic or Spanish influence there. As I said, I have recently come to accept it as being an integral part of my makeup and I now believe I would have looked unusual had it been smaller.

All the above is meant to say I look after myself. I’m not one of those string bean women who are nearly 50 and look 30 by virtue of being a size zero and who maintain their figure with 5 hours of gym workouts a day.

I have an active lifestyle, I eat proper meals that I can cook from scratch and I walk every day to stay healthy. I’m not one of those ‘power walkers’ - I just take a stroll around the neighborhood every day to keep my finger on the pulse of the community. I get to see who has moved in, who’s moved out and who’s letting their yard go.

I have been married to my wonderful, loving and loved husband, Herbert, for twenty nine years.

We are upstanding members of the Church of Blessed Children, where today’s marriage ceremony for my youngest daughter is being conducted.

How it came to pass that my daughter is being married here is a story unto itself and the reason for this missive.

I would like to point out before beginning, that our pastor of 5 years approved the union even before I did. He was much more easily convinced of the holiness of the union than I was.

Anyway, back to myself and my credentials. I am three years older than Herbert, a proud homemaker and mother of four. We were married in 1993 and gave birth to Herbert (Herb) junior a year later in 1994.

I won’t go into our own parents’ hand in Herbert marrying me at his age - that is another story to do with misunderstandings and shotguns but I will have you know I was married as a virgin, to a virgin.

My first baby a whole year later, put paid, to both parents’ concerns.

Herb was followed by Celeste, named after my grandmother, two years later in 1996.

We were quite content with 2 children so Arthur’s appearance in 2003 was quite the surprise.

Spot, born Sandra Michelle Carter, came out of nowhere. Even the doctor who delivered the twins was shocked. She was tiny and the most precious surprise gift God could ever have given us. And the most challenging.

From an early age, Sandi, as she was known then, was a real life female version of the cartoon character, Dennis the Menace. I half expected her to not make it to adulthood.

She was always underfoot, hyperactive and in trouble for anything that ever went wrong. With good reason. If a pie disappeared out of the oven, we went straight to Sandi. If the car had suddenly developed four flat tires, we looked to Sandi. A broken window, Sandi. At least she always admitted her wrongdoing. It just kept escalating.

She was first expelled from middle school at the age of eleven, for gross misconduct that very nearly forced us to quit the church in shame. Sexual misconduct was the original charge, but it was officially recorded as gross misconduct after Herbert had words with the Principal.

By the age of fourteen, Sandi was in her third school and we were seriously considering sending her to an academy for wayward children or a nunnery. I think she was sexually active even before Herb, who never gave us a moment’s trouble.

At 17, Sandi graduated. That in and of itself is testimony to her intelligence considering the amount of time she was not in class. Sandi refused to go to college and Herbert even threatened to put her out of the house if she didn’t immediately straighten up and fly right.

My role as wife and mother is to support Herbert, although he was by then at a loss as to what else to do and as the power behind the throne, so was I, to be honest.

We got through that and Sandi got a job as a secretary for a production company. The pay was good and Sandi began contributing to the household. By this time it was just her and Art still living at home, although after the Summer, Art too would leave to go to college.

The first hint that something was amiss came from Betty at church. She’d caught her son looking at inappropriate websites and had witnessed Sandi on his screen.

She told me she nearly threw up at what she saw, but refused to elucidate. Once again we had a crisis caused by Sandi and once again we had to make a decision about leaving the church in shame.

Sandi, being Sandi, did not deny her activity but assured us she had not taken to a life of pornography. She explained that she was ‘merely’ an occasional model to increase site traffic.

She assured us that her countenance simply appeared on advertising for her employer’s website and they used portrait pictures of her alter ego, Spot, to get what she called, ‘clicks’. She insisted she had not become what she called a ‘model’ for the agency.

Well, we could not condone that. We are a Christian family and as such, have a responsibility to condemn such practices as advertising the proverbial highway to hell. Herbert and I had no choice but to put her out of the house when she refused to quit on the spot.

Sandi left us, as heartbroken as we were, and moved in with one of the company directors. That director is Steve. It was 6 months before we saw Sandi again and she was no longer the daughter we’d tried to raise.

The meeting happened at our church. Steve had accompanied her to a Sunday service and I nearly fainted when I saw them.

The Church of the Blessed Children is a nondenominational church and there are always misfits in the congregation. It’s not unusual to see a few homeless people in the congregation from time to time, or a couple of men holding hands, maybe a woman who could easily be mistaken for a man, attending with her girlfriend.

We’ve even had men in women’s clothing attend. The pastor welcomes them all with open arms. That in and of itself has been a challenge that Herbert and I have welcomed over the years.