Be Who God Meant You To Be

Something Old
The existence of a certain interdimensional bar aside, Meg Ford has never had a better-kept secret than her wedding dress. Even her mother has never seen it before the day she helps Meg dress in it. Months of asking has gotten her groom the information that it is white, and that she really likes it. (Also, that it's not so formal that he will be required to wear a morning coat instead of just a suit. He's very grateful.) It has been here at Sylvain and Ginette's house since the day she bought it with Laura and Parker. Ginette has taken care of the few minor alterations and repairs it needed. Now, looking in the mirror, Meg realizes she hasn't been entirely honest with Alain. She doesn't just really like this dress. She absolutely adores it.

Something New
On the other hand (or foot), the shoes have been far from secret. Just about everyone has seen her shoes by now as Meg has been carefully and methodically breaking them in for weeks now, wearing them around her apartment and to the end of the universe and out to buy the paper at the newsstand on the corner and down the aisle in the church at the rehearsal. It's the only logical way to deal with them. The heels are higher than anything she usually wears, and she's going to be on her feet in them rather a lot today, and no one wants blisters for their honeymoon. (Especially not when one is headed to Paris.)

Something Borrowed
She doesn't wear a veil. She wears her hair up, held in place with a great many bobby pins and a silver comb that belongs to Tante Ginette. She'd worn it at her wedding, she'd said, when she'd offered it to Meg with a great many if you'd likes and only if you want tos. It was quite obvious what it would mean to her if Meg wore it, though, and Meg never for a moment considered declining. Ginette hasn't any children of her own, and she's very close to Alain and his brother, Luc. She's been lovely and gracious and wonderful about extending that include Meg as she's become an ever more fixed part of Alain's life.

Something Blue
Her emerald-cut aquamarine earrings were a gift from Alain for her birthday, selected expressly for today. Most of the jewelry she wears today came from Alain, which only seems appropriate. One of the two bracelets around her right wrist was a gift in honor of their two-month anniversary, the first gift she ever had from him. Her engagement ring has temporarily taken the place of the amethyst she usually wears on her right hand, so it won't be in the way of the gold wedding band she'll be putting on shortly. She doesn't wear any kind of necklace; the neckline of the dress doesn't need help or competition.

And a Silver Sixpence in Her Shoe
When every detail of Meg's outfit has been checked and double-checked, Kim goes to put the last touches on hers, and their mother produces a small velvet box like that for a ring.

"What's this?" Meg asks.

"It was mine, from my wedding," Deirdre says, and Meg opens the box to find an old English sixpence. "For your left shoe. I hope it brings you as much luck as it brought me."

"Thank you," Meg says, settling the sixpence in the side of her shoe, and then hugging her mother.

"You're welcome. Now don't make me cry. We don't have time to redo our makeup."

"Wouldn't dream of it."

"I'll get it," Meg says, quickly, when the doorbell rings.

She and her parents are sitting around the kitchen table, finishing what is, for them, a rather late breakfast. But Meg and her father had gotten back from the ball game in Toronto quite late last night, and some days you just have to sleep in a little.

(But not a lot. Not with company coming.)

She doesn't miss the amused look that passes between her parents before John says, "Thought you might."

There's something Meg might almost call relief on Alain's face when she, and only she, answers the door. He takes her hand to pull her out onto the porch. Meg shuts the door behind her. "Hi."

Alain wraps his arms around her waist and kisses her before he answers. "Hello."

"How was your trip?"

"Fine. With a very pleasant end," he says, kissing her again.

"This isn't quite the end," she says. "You still haven't made it into the house."

"It can wait a few minutes, right?" he says, and he sounds . . . nervous.

Meg leans back a bit, far enough to see his face. He looks nervous, too.

"You're nervous," she says. He's usually so collected -- it's kind of odd to see him nervous.

And kind of endearing.

Alain exhales something that's not quite a sigh. "Ma belle, I am about to walk into a man's house and say, 'Hello, Dr. Ford, I'm the boy who thinks he's good enough for your daughter.' Of course I'm nervous."

"So, you're not worried about my mother, just my father?"

Alain's eyes widen. "Should I be worried about your mother?" he asks.

Meg just barely keeps from smiling. "Sorry, that was mean," she says. "You shouldn't be too nervous, though."

"And why is that?"

"Because you have the complete and utter support of the daughter in question. And they both know it."

Alain exhales again and then nods. "All right. I will try not to be too nervous."

"Good. Come on, let's get it over with. The first two minutes will be the worst, right?"

"I hope so . . ." Alain says, dropping his arms from around her waist.

Meg takes one of his hands, and reaches to open the front door.

And then turns back to Alain, with a slightly sheepish expression. "Sorry."

"What?" he asks.

"I think I've locked us out."

Christmas is a time when traditions hold sway, a noisy, jumbled, joyous time, delight and wonder and joy, peace on Earth and good will towards all mankind.

It's a soft and hazy time, slightly out of focus, shrouded in snow and twinkling lights, and it's hard to place a single moment in its proper place in time, sixteen years of holiday memories, all very much alike. Meg looks back and the same tree stands in the same corner of the same room, covered in the same ornaments and the same lights, with the same boxes decorated with the same bows beneath its boughs. The same records play the same songs, the same cookies are cut with the same cutters, the same sights and sounds and smells. Like the poet, Meg couldn't have told you if it snowed for six days and six nights when she was twelve, or for twelve days and twelve nights when she was six.

The most recent Christmases, however, the ones that came After, those stand out, clear and sharp as broken crystal, edges rough and dangerous. Traditions and customs designed for four shift awkwardly to accommodate only three, or fall by the wayside all together.

The Ford house is quiet this holiday, cozy and comfortable to be sure, but calm, with none of the controlled chaos of Meg's childhood Christmases. She asks, as she makes the shopping list, how many they're expecting for Christmas dinner -- it's easier than asking the question any other way. And she's disappointed and angry and sad and ever so relieved, when she makes the list out in quantities for three.

On Christmas Eve, they go to church, and Meg does nothing more than mouth the words of hymns ancient and familiar. In the past, her sister, holding the other side of their shared hymnal (there are never enough to go around at Christmas), would nudge her and keep nudging her till she overcame reservations about her far less than perfect voice and started singing, if quietly. This year, like last, and the one before, Meg gives the hymnal to the woman beside her, and observes the letter rather than the spirit of "Silent Night."

There's no one to sneak downstairs at 3AM with, to make cocoa and turn on the Christmas tree lights and speculate about what's in the packages, and Meg sleeps until her alarm goes off at 8:00. There's no need to stand in the hallway outside the bathroom door, calling for her sister to hurry up, hurry up, hurry up because everyone's waiting for her to finish with her hair so it won't be a mess in the photographs that will be stuck in albums that are rarely flipped through.

Meg watches the clock, as they open presents and drink coffee, and converts for time zones in her head, and when she begins to suspect the phone will ring soon she pulls on old boots and new gloves and says she's going for a walk. She stays out until she cannot stand the cold any longer, and lets herself back in quietly as her father is hanging up at the end of the transatlantic call.

In the evening, her mother makes popcorn and her father builds a fire and Meg heats cider. When everyone is settled in, her mother pulls out a slim red book with a cracked red leather cover and reads aloud A Child's Christmas in Wales. Once, the book would have made its way around the room, and they'd have taken their turns reading and listening, but now her mother reads the whole of it, and Meg and her father listen, and the chair on the other side of the fireplace is empty.

All the Christmases roll down toward the two-tongued sea, like a cold and headlong moon bundling down the sky that was our street; and they stop at the rim of the ice-edged fish-freezing waves . . .