The Wedding Flowers

I guess I was about six or seven years old when this visit with grandma took place.  My family was living in Cleveland, Ohio, and my mom was in the hospital giving birth to her third child.  Myself, my sister Betty, and my cousin Martha were spending two weeks with grandma during my mom's recovery.  Needless to say, we loved staying at grandma's house anytime, especially in the summer time.

There was a popular television show on at that time, called Here Comes The Bride.  It told the story of a bride and groom, from the time they were engaged until the I Do's were spoken.  We loved that TV show and watched it every day, dreaming of the day when we would be the bride and that would be our beautiful wedding, maybe even we'd be on that television show!  You never know.

After the program one day, we were outside playing and decided we would play Here Comes The Bride, and we would all three take our turn being the bride.  We asked grandma for some old curtains and bedspreads to use as our wedding gowns, and the show was on.  We set up the back yard around where the swing hung on the old apple tree, and that was the perfect church setting.  We set up old chairs we carried out of the wash house and got our wedding chapel set up.  Of course we had make believe grooms, no boys allowed in this show.  We got the first bride all wrapped up in her wedding gown, and we were ready.

But wait, we had no flowers!  You can't have a wedding without flowers, and the ones on the television show were the most beautiful flowers we had ever seen.  What could we use for our wedding flowers?  Then our little devious eyes spied grandma's flower garden!  It was like we all three saw it at the same time and we knew what the others were thinking, we had just found our flowers!  Come on girls, let go cut some flowers!  And cut we did.  There wasn't a flower left on the stem that had a bloom on it.  We wiped out grandma's beautiful flower garden in one foul swoop - beautiful flowers - gone!  But did we care?  No.  We had our wedding flowers and were ready for the ceremony.

Now of course we did our first run through wedding and were so pleased with ourselves we decided to invite grandma to be a wedding guest.  She had been busy working in the house and we had been so good and quiet outside playing, no fussing or anything, she had no idea what we were playing.  She was so happy to be invited, and she needed a break from her housework, so she happily came outside with us.  She looked at the apple tree wedding chapel, all strewn with flowers, HER beautiful flowers from her flower garden, and she stopped cold in her tracks.  "What have you girls done?   Those are my flowers you have cut!"  We thought she was proud of how pretty they looked so we readily agreed, yes, they are from your flower garden grandma, aren't they beautiful we asked.  She did not share our joy.

I cannot say I never saw my grandma mad, especially at her grandkids, but this was one day she was not happy with us.  It didn't take us long to figure out we were in big trouble.  Our instincts kicked in, and we ran, we ran and hid from grandma.  She started out after us, and it was all our little feet could do to stay out of her reach.  We didn't know grandma could run so fast!   But, as all stories end, she did catch us and we did receive a punishment from grandma that day.    

She no doubt was sad that her beautiful flower garden was gone for the summer, but I can't help but know in my heart she was glad to see we had so much fun with her beautiful flowers.  We  were brides for a day with many dreams for the future.

Even now, when I look at my flower gardens planted here at grandma's house, my mind always goes back to that day when Here Comes The Bride was the game of the day at grandma's house.