A/N: As usual, I am not using anyone’s real name. I don’t think I’ve mentioned that my husband chose his pseudonym, saying, “If you are Molly, then I have to be Arthur.” Yes, we are both Harry Potter fans. ;)
An Unconventional Courtship
I wasn’t particularly interested in dating in high school as it was more important to me to spend as much time as I could with my grandparents. I did date in college, a couple of random dates that went nowhere and two short relationships. In my junior year of college, my friend Tony asked me out. We had been friends for three years and I really liked Tony. I thought finally I might have a relationship that could go somewhere. I was wrong. Tony tried to rape me. I got away and was not hurt, at least not physically, but I was devastated by a close friend’s betrayal. I ended the friendship as well as the relationship. I also lost a few other friends who took his side. How a potential rapist earned a “side” I have never understood, but I certainly didn’t need people like that in my life. I decided I was through with dating. I realized I had been happier when I was not dating someone than when I was. I had always wanted to get married, but I certainly didn’t need to be in a relationship just for the sake of a relationship, especially not a toxic one.
During my junior year, I had season tickets to the theater with my roommate Ellie, her boyfriend and my good friend Cory and our friend Tricia. The latter was someone who abandoned me over the Tony situation. There was going to be a very discounted post-season production of “Fiddler on the Roof” which I wanted to see. Unfortunately, none of my friends were available to go. (Well, I didn’t invite Tricia.) I asked several people if they wanted to go, but nobody was available! I was kvetching about it to Ellie and she began suggesting people I could ask. I dismissed several of her ideas because I didn’t like the suggested person. Then she suggested Arthur. “Arthur’s in the band with me, and I know he likes musicals!” I had known Arthur for three years and liked him. We met through the campus ministry center when we were freshmen. I said I was not going to ask Arthur because he might think it was a date and I wasn’t dating anymore.
She spent the next 45 minutes convincing me to ask Arthur. So, I told him I wanted to see “Fiddler on the Roof” and since Ellie said he liked musicals, would he want to go? I informed him very bluntly this was not a date. He said he’d go. Two days before we were supposed to go to the theater, New Orleans experienced The Flood of ’95. Everywhere was under water, including our campus ministry building and our cars and no one was going anywhere. By Fiddler Day, Ellie and I were stir crazy. She had to get a dress for her boyfriend’s graduation and we were both sick of being in the apartment. She found another friend whose car was functioning and we planned to go shopping. I said I would only go if I could be back in time to get to Fiddler. Ellie told me I was being ridiculous and of course Fiddler would be canceled. I called the theater, and she was right. So I joined Ellie and her friend and went shopping. I should have stayed home. Shopping with Ellie was a nightmare. By 5 P.M. she still didn’t have a dress because she refused to admit she wore a bigger size than what she was trying on and almost bit my head off when I suggested it. I started fretting that I needed to call Arthur because he might not know the production had been canceled. Ellie said “As flaky as you are, Molly, if you thought to call the theater, of course, Arthur, Mr. Conscientious, called the theater. He knows it’s canceled.” I still thought I should call him, but I didn’t know his phone number by heart and the only person who could look it up for me was with me. When I got home, about half an hour after Arthur was supposed to pick me up, I called and told this entire story to his roommate. We eventually connected and I felt really bad he had been standing on the doorstep in a suit because although he had called the theater, he had not been able to get through. (To this day, he says I stood him up on our first date. I still insist it was not a date.)
A week later, we were scheduled to leave on a mission trip to Latvia. Arthur and I were both going, along with our pastor and his family and five other students. Twelve people total, most of whom had non-functional cars from being underwater. So we gathered together at the campus ministry, were divided into teams and split up the errands needing to be completed. Arthur and I were assigned as a team. We were to go to Kinko’s to make copies of the devotionals everybody had written. Except Arthur hadn’t written his yet, so we went to his house first so he could write his devotionals after which we could go to Kinko’s. He was sitting at his computer in his desk chair and I was sitting on his bed which was the only other place to sit. He glanced over at me and there was this MOMENT. I looked into his eyes and thought my whole not dating thing might have been a bit hasty. Nothing happened, but I felt the possibility, although I was very hesitant to ruin another three year friendship. We had been friends for three years through our campus ministry group. In preparing for the Latvia mission trip, all of the students who were part of the trip planning had been spending time together fundraising and making preparations, and we had all gotten to know each other better and become closer friends.
I remembered back to my freshman year, I was looking over The Freshman Directory with my friend Anna. The Freshman Directory was a paper book with name, picture, hobbies, majors, likes and dislikes of all freshmen. Sort of a proto-Facebook but on paper and not interactive. In an odd coincidence, the two people with whom I had gone out were on the same page. Anna teased me, “Two on the same page? Molly, you’re working your way through page 37! Who else do you know on this page?” We both scanned the book and I told her I knew Arthur. “Oooo! He’ll be the one you go out with next!” I said, “I would never go out with Arthur! He’s such a nerd.” Never say never . . .
In Latvia, we were frequently paired as the only two people without significant others who didn’t speak Latvian. Arthur held my hand for the first time when we were walking around Riga, the capital of Latvia, near the end of our trip. We were crossing the street, and he took my hand and never let go.
On our last night in Latvia, we had a cookout and bonfire with our host families. Jumping a bonfire is a Latvian tradition, and our host families’ children were happily doing this while the rest of us watched. We were told young men jumped the bonfire to prove how cool they were. Young women jumped so the young men couldn’t get big heads. Older men would jump to prove to their wives they still had it. Older women for the same reason. In our case, it was only the children until our friend Janis’ cousin who was seventy-five arrived and the first thing she did was jump over the bonfire and then grabbed my hand and pulled me up, urging me in Latvian to do so as well. So I jumped over the fire, the first non Latvian to do so, and everyone else followed suit. Our friend Janis tried to convince Arthur and I to jump the fire together, but I was suspicious and knew he was up to something. I made Janis confess what that meant. Jumping the fire with another person is a declaration of intention to marry. We did not jump the fire together.
When we came home from the trip, I flew to my parents' house for a visit the next day. We got the pictures from the trip developed and my mom and my best friend Joan both had the same comment—who is this guy who is in every picture with you? Are you dating him? Joan, of course, got more details than my mom but I told them both I didn’t know. It might just be a Latvia thing.
When I flew back to New Orleans, Arthur picked me up at the airport. I was the last
person off the plane and he thought I had missed the flight. He was glad I didn’t. We
went to his house and ate half a pie out of my back pack. I had brought one with me because Tippin’s pie is awesome! We decided we needed real food so we were debating options and discovered we both liked sushi and had the same favorite sushi restaurant
although we had never been there together. So we went for sushi. And we ate and
talked and ate and talked and ate and talked . . . and then we heard vacuuming. It was
after 11 P.M. and all of the chairs were on top of the tables except for ours and the waiter was vacuuming. We had no idea we had been at the restaurant for so long! The very amused restaurant owners were smiling at us and told us we didn’t have to leave, but we did. After that, we were dating. (I still tell Arthur that the sushi restaurant makes a much better first date story.)
Our courtship was unconventional. We had already known each other for three years, had many friends in common and since we both looked like death warmed over during and after the mission trip to Latvia, there was no putting on airs. We already knew each other. Arthur worked as an accounting assistant from eight to five and I worked at a call center from four to nine, so we often had lunch dates, where I would meet him somewhere near his office.
After about a month, one of Arthur’s high school friends was getting married and he invited me to be his date for the wedding, which was to take place two hours away from where he grew up in Florida, so he planned to pop in and quickly visit his parents. He didn’t want to tell them he was coming so it could be a surprise. I asked if he’d brought a girlfriend home before and he hadn’t. I informed him there was no way I was showing up unannounced on his unsuspecting mother. I agreed he could surprise the rest of his family, but he must tell his mother we were coming. If he didn’t, I told him I wouldn’t go. He finally agreed to tell his mom and nobody else.
We scared the older of his younger sisters half to death when we walked into the house. Arthur parked his car behind their house so his father wouldn’t see it when he came home from work where he sold cars. Arthur’s mom was a librarian, so both were at work when we arrived on Saturday afternoon. Knowing we were coming, Arthur’s mom brought his grandma over with her. Arthur’s grandma did not miss a beat when she saw us. “Sweetie! It’s so good to see you!” She hugged him, and he introduced me, and she hugged me, too, and said how thrilled she was to meet me. She had the same name as my grandma, and there was something about her that I loved instantly. Arthur’s father came home shortly after and was completely shocked. After his initial shock wore off, he said to Arthur’s grandma, “Mom, we had a seventy-five year old at the dealership today buying a sports car.” She piped up, “Is he single?!” “No, he’s married.” Arthur’s grandma replied, “Darn it! All the good ones are married or buried!” We spent a pleasant evening with Arthur’s parents, grandma and two younger sisters. His older brother was not present as he lived in Miami. We went to church the next morning, ate lunch after and headed back to New Orleans because both of us had to work on Monday.
Everything between Arthur and me had been going really well, until we had our first big fight. We did not leave each other on a positive note that evening. I was angry and hurt and stewing over it and decided I would break up with him when I saw him the next day. I had an extremely busy day scheduled so put the drama with Arthur out of my mind until later. Absolutely everything that could go wrong went wrong that day. The worst sort of Murphy’s Law day ever! I was frustrated almost to the point of tears and the thought crossed my mind when I saw Arthur, everything would be okay. Wait, what?! I was angry with him! I argued with myself, but my heart defeated my head and I realized I was in love with Arthur. The thought terrified me, since I had never been in love before. When I finally arrived home, I checked my email and Arthur had emailed me a drawing of a rose, drawn out of ampersands, dashes, and asterixes. That was extremely nerdy but also extremely cute and I melted. When I saw him, he immediately apologized and asked for forgiveness which I gave and for the first time, he told me he loved me. I said I loved him, too. He asked about my day, and I began venting, and to shut me up, Arthur kissed me. It was not our first kiss, but it was the first kiss after admitting we loved each other and I not only forgot what I was saying, I forgot my own name.
We planned before starting our senior year of college to go on vacation to each of our home towns. Arthur grew up in a small town in central Florida, and we planned trips to Disney World, Kennedy Space Center and Busch Gardens, as well as spending time with his family. When we arrived, I used the phone in Arthur’s room to call my parents and tell them we had gotten there safely. I had just hung up the phone when Arthur’s mom opened the door, and said, “Your sisters are very concerned you have a girl in your room with the door closed since I won’t let them have a boy in their rooms with the door closed.” She rolled her eyes. I knew I liked her.
One night we were sitting in Arthur’s room with the door open and he began asking me a lot of questions about my future plans, most of which I couldn’t answer. I wondered why he was asking me such specific questions. Somewhere in the back of my mind, there was a glimmer of recognition, he must be about to propose. That would explain the questions! I suddenly became very nervous and had to pee but didn’t want to leave the room in case he lost his nerve. He looked into my eyes and said, “Molly Elizabeth Wheezy, will you make me the happiest man in the world and be my wife?” I said yes, and then ran out of the room to go to the bathroom, finally, but I came back. We spent hours talking into the night before I returned to the bedroom I was borrowing from Arthur’s sister to sleep.
Arthur’s parents got up ridiculously early. I heard him get up to go tell them we were engaged, and joined him shortly. The first thing my future father-in-law said to me was, “Glad to hear you’re not pregnant!” And I lost it. I was emotional and had maybe three hours of sleep. I called my parents to tell them but forgot about the time difference, so it was before six in Missouri. My dad said, “That’s wonderful, Honey. I really like Arthur.” My mom continued repeating “Oh dear! Oh my!” over and over again. I was again calling from the phone in Arthur’s room and when I was about to hang up, his mom came by and closed the bedroom door. When I hung up the phone, Arthur said, “I guess engaged people are allowed to have a girl in the room with the door closed.” We both burst out laughing.
A couple of days later, Arthur’s mom was taking his sisters shopping for school clothes and we went along, so she could buy him some new clothes as a birthday present. While at the mall, we separated from his mom and sisters, picked out his clothes and planned to meet up with them later. Arthur bought me an engagement ring. We had to wait to have it sized. So we met up with Arthur’s mom and she went to pay for the clothes he had selected. She commented on liking the variety of shirts, and he said, “I have a fashion advisor now” and hugged me. We saw one of his mom’s coworkers at the mall, and she introduced me as “Arthur’s girlfriend.” Arthur corrected her saying, “Molly is my fiancee.” His mom closed her eyes while her coworker congratulated us. When we met up with his sisters, his mom was ready to leave, but we said we couldn’t because we had to meet someone. She looked confused and Arthur said, “I bought Molly an engagement ring and we are waiting to have it sized.” She burst into tears and hugged him. Other shoppers were walking by staring, and I was trying my best to give off vibes of “Nothing to see here, move along now.” Arthur’s sisters became way more interested in our engagement when they saw my ring.
That evening, we went out to dinner to celebrate Arthur’s birthday, but it ended up being a celebration of our engagement as well. We had not had time to tell Arthur’s dad about the ring since he met us at the restaurant straight from work. He saw it when I was taking a sip of iced tea and grabbed my wrist. Arthur’s quick reflexes of grabbing my glass from the other side saved his dad from getting a lap full of tea!
After dinner we planned to go to Arthur’s grandma’s house for cake and ice cream, but his mom realized she hadn’t brought the birthday candles with her, so we volunteered to pick them up on the way to his grandma’s. I needed to use the bathroom, and when I turned to dry my hands, I screamed. There was the biggest spider I had ever seen in the bathtub! I flung open the door and crashed into Arthur who had come running to see why I screamed. “Spider!” I shrieked, shuddering. He looked into the tub and said, “Yeah, it’s a Wolf Spider. They’re harmless.” “Kill it!” “It’s not going to hurt you.” “Kill that thing, or I’m stealing your car and going back to New Orleans!” Arthur rolled his eyes at me, earning him a glare but he walked off, returning a minute later with a broom and dust pan. I stayed in the hallway while he walked into the bathroom to deal with the spider. “What is this? There’s some big pink ball with the spider.” “I don’t care what it is! Just kill it!” “Oh no . . .” “What?!” "It’s an egg sac and there are baby spiders coming out of it.” “Kill them, too.” I heard the sound of a broom thwacking against the bathtub. “They aren’t dying.” I sighed and went into the bathroom. The situation had worsened drastically. There were now more tiny dots moving around the tub than I could count. I turned on the water in the bathtub, hoping to wash them down the drain, but the spiders started running away from the water. I used the broom to plug the tub and learned the blasted spiders could swim! “Please go get a mop.” Arthur came back with two mops and looked at me questioningly. “The spiders can swim so we’ll have to hold them under to drown them.” I took a mop and pushed Ginormous Mother Spider under the water. It took a ridiculous amount of time for the spiders to drown. We almost had them all dead when the phone rang. Arthur answered, and I heard him say, “Killing spiders . . . A wolf spider was giving birth in the bathtub . . . Molly’s afraid of spiders . . . We’ll be right over.”
Arthur returned as the last of the spiders finally died. “Dad wondered what was taking us so long. I have the impression he didn’t believe me about the spiders.” “Well, what did he think we were doing?!” Arthur gave me a meaningful look. “We’ll leave the spider carcasses here as evidence.”
When we came home later that evening, the entire family herded into the bathroom to see the spider carcasses. Arthur’s youngest sister said, “How can the two of you get married? You can’t even manage to kill a spider.” I responded, “Actually, we killed about a thousand spiders. You’re welcome.” She rolled her eyes at me. I offered to help Arthur’s mom clean up the mess, but she said she’d take care of it.
We planned our wedding on the car trip between Florida and New Orleans. At least we planned the parts we cared about. We both cared more about the getting married part than the wedding. Of course, we had to have a wedding. My mother worked in a shop that sold wedding invitations and monogrammed stuff, and she would have killed us both if we deprived her of having a wedding for her only child. We figured out what mattered to us, and then let her run with the rest of it.
The visit to St Louis to spend time with my parents was mostly taken up with wedding planning but we did manage trips to The Gateway Arch, The St. Louis Science Center and The Muny Opera. The latter my friend Joan and I attended every week as soon as we were old enough to drive because the seats in the back were free. Arthur enjoyed The Science Center and helped a group of children build a model of the Arch with large blocks since he was tall enough to put in the middle piece. It was fun to watch him with the children and how kind he was to them. I thought he would make a wonderful dad, and I experienced an absolute lightning bolt of desire, thinking, “You. Me. Kids. Now!”
I always enjoyed the Arch, but while Arthur learned in Florida that I am arachnophobic, at the Arch I learned that he is both claustrophobic and acrophobic, which made a trip to the Arch basically Hell for him. He referred to the elevator that takes visitors up the legs of the Arch as “the clothes dryer” and we only stayed at the top for a few seconds because he was very unnerved by its swaying with the wind. I asked why he hadn’t told me and he just shrugged and said he thought he would be okay. That was Arthur’s one and only trip to the Arch.
I saw Joan during the trip to St. Louis and asked her to be my maid of honor. She was shocked since the last in person conversation we had was about whether or not I was dating Arthur. I agreed with her that things had happened quickly. We had only been dating for two months before he proposed, but we had known each other for three years. Even with my hesitancy over dating another friend, it did not take me long to know it was right.
When our senior year of college started up again, I of course was spending more time with Arthur but that also meant I was spending more time with his roommate Jay. I had met Jay before, but had never spent much time with him, and realized I did not like Jay at all. He made inappropriate jokes, said offensive things about women, seemed to do nothing but drink, and whenever I was around him, I usually ended up getting angry and going home in a huff. One day Arthur said, “Molly, Jay is a really good friend. Would you please try to get along with him?” I became instantly defensive, but before I could say anything, Arthur said, “I’ve had the same conversation with him, too, and told him to stop purposely doing things to make you angry. I don’t know what’s gotten into him, but I did tell him to stop it, and he said he would, and would try to get along with you.” I agreed I would try, too. It was only a few days later that I was over at Arthur’s house to cook him dinner since he had a big exam. I arrived before Arthur was home from work, and was in the kitchen when Jay walked in. I remembered what Arthur had asked, pasted a smile on my face and greeted Jay as warmly as I could. He responded in kind. Then we stood there staring at each other at a loss and I knew Jay was thinking what I was. “Crap! We have to talk to each other. This is for Arthur.” Jay broke the silence first, and asked about the book of short stories I had left on the kitchen counter. I told him I was reading it for class. He said he’d read it, too, but in high school. I asked about his favorite story. When Arthur came home from work, Jay and I had been discussing literature for half an hour and were actually laughing together! Arthur looked at both of us skeptically and said, “Who are you two and what have you done with my fiance and best friend?” We laughed even harder at that, and have gotten along ever since and became friends, too.
Arthur and I went to my parents’ home for Thanksgiving and had engagement photos taken, as well as did more wedding planning. We decided to celebrate Christmas separately for one last time, but I joined Arthur and his family for New Years. My mom’s friends Jane and John always wintered in Florida, so they took me with them and Arthur met them to pick me up. He thanked them for bringing his Christmas present. I was able to get to know Arthur’s parents better on this trip. I learned the extent of their knowledge of me when he proposed was “I’m dating a girl named Molly I met at the campus ministry.” He had neglected to tell them we had known each other for three years. We spent Spring Break at my parents’ home for more wedding planning, and my mom, Joan and I went to Moberly, Missouri to buy my wedding dress and bridesmaid dresses which Joan helped to pick. My great aunt May whom I was really close to lived in Moberly, so we went to visit her and introduced Arthur. Her best friend Emma owned a dress shop in town. From the time I was three years old, I loved going to visit Miss Emma at her shop. Half of the store was for business type clothes and the other half was wedding gowns and bridesmaid and prom dresses. One of my earliest memories is hiding in the racks of pretty dresses and touching all of the satins and silks. I announced at the age of three that I would buy my wedding dress from Miss Emma. And I did. My mom had suggested looking at some of the dress shops in St. Louis, but I saw no point in that, since I wasn’t going to buy anything except from Miss Emma. My wedding dress was the third one I tried on.
The weekend of our college graduations was the first time my parents and Arthur’s parents met, an event that made the graduations rather pale in comparison. We had two graduation ceremonies to attend since Arthur was in the Engineering School and I was Liberal Arts. We spent four days herding thirteen people around New Orleans and coordinating all of this without cell phones. My graduation was on Saturday morning and on that afternoon after a celebratory lunch, everyone came to my apartment so that Arthur’s sisters could try on shoes and bridesmaid dresses. We actually had fun! Sunday morning was Arthur’s graduation followed by lunch, and after lunch, Arthur asked if anybody would like to see the robot he had worked on for his senior project. His mom, sisters and I went with him. He took us to the robotics lab and said, “Here it is!” He gestured to a large piece of plastic grid with multicolored wires woven through it. It looked like the back of a cross-stitch project. All of us stared at it in silence. Arthur seemed distressed at our underwhelmed reactions and began explaining each wire. I had no idea what he was saying. I don’t think his mom did either, but she tried and said, “Wow. You are obviously very passionate about this project . . . and that’s wonderful . . . and the wires are so brightly colored . . .” The look on Arthur’s face was priceless. He couldn’t believe we didn’t get it at all. I said, “We were expecting R2D2.” His mom and sisters burst into a chorus of “Yes! Exactly! I thought it would move or something!” Arthur facepalmed. I said, “Sweetie, you are talking to two high school students, a librarian, and an English major. You say “robot” we are thinking R2D2.”
In the two weeks leading up to the wedding, I was staying in my childhood bedroom
while Arthur was staying in the guest room at my parent’s house. The night before the
wedding, he moved to Jane’s home where all of the groomsmen were staying so she could make sure they showed up on time. One of our groomsmen, Janis, was driving Arthur to Jane’s house. They had left and I went to shower and get ready for bed. When I got out, Janis and Arthur were back, apparently for the third time since they left because Arthur kept forgetting things.
On the day of the wedding, I was in the back of the church giggling with Joan. There was this window at the back of the church we could see out of but no one could see us. The
groomsmen all looked serious, but the bridesmaids were all giggling, except for
Arthur’s sister—she was only fifteen and was terrified she was going to mess up. My
wedding day was the only time 100 people had ever told me they loved me and that I
was beautiful. I was so thrilled to see Arthur. We hadn’t seen each other for an
entire thirteen hours, so during the bell choir’s song after we lit the unity candle, we were kneeling at the altar and whispering to each other. On the wedding video you can see our heads bobbing back and forth as we were chatting. The pastor whispered with us too. My mom was furious we were talking during the service, but it was our wedding!
We’ll talk if we want to. We’ve always been able to talk and laugh together. And we still are over 26 years later.
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