Married in May, Rue the Day

On the Wednesday afternoon she had collected the curtains for the bay windows at the front of their new house. Her Mum and Dad had taken her to collect them, then Dad had helped her hang them. Brown velvet in the living room, and pink crushed velvet for the bedroom. The pink echoed the pink blooms on the carpet and wallpaper.

On returning home for her last night in the mobile home she’d lived in for two years, she dug up the azalea. It was covered in rich cerise blooms. Not the best time to be moving a plant, but the site owner had changed their mind about her selling the mobile home. So the azalea was dug up, then she walked down to her parent’s house, where her Dad placed it at the bottom of the rockery. It’s still there now, over 40 years later.

Saturday came around. She went to have her hair washed and cut. She even let them blow dry it, but refused hair spray, as it made her feel as if her hair was an uncomfortable hat.

Her bridesmaids arrived about 1pm. Her niece and a friend she’d been at school with. Their dresses were a pale pink self striped cotton. Her dress was a mother of pearl satin jacquard with lily of the valley scattered over it. Then the neighbour doing the flowers arrived. The bridesmaid’s posies were of pink roses, and her bouquet of pink roses, lily of the valley, muscari and ornamental ivy, and there were circlets of pink roses for all three of them for their heads. She hadn’t wanted a veil, or a Juliette cap, dismissing both as “too fussy”.

At 1.30pm her Mum and the bridesmaid’s left for the church. Just her and Dad left now. He gave her the pearls her Grandma had let her wear, when she was May Queen, all those years ago. Then the car returned for them. On the way to the church, just after they’d emerged from the avenue of copper beech and started down the cherry blossom lined road, her Dad told her that she “didn’t have to do this.” But she did.

The years went by and the control became unbearable, her mind kept going back to the words her Dad said. At first she didn’t think she could extract herself, but finally the blooms on her arms where she’d been grabbed to stop her doing thing, and the invisible bruises blooming inside her became too much.

She divorced him.

At her new house for the children and herself, she bought a tiny cerise flowered azalea. Every year since it’s grown larger and been covered with cerise blooms. Twenty five years later, she accepts she didn’t have to do it, but her three children, all who make her proud to be their Mum, were worth it.