The Breakup, Three Little Words, and a Honeymoon Cruise

Friday, August 7, 4:00 a.m., text from Mark:

As you can imagine, I called Mark while getting ready for work.  I could hardly process what he was telling me.  Niki called off the wedding.

At the airport.
Obviously, there were no tears shed.

By that night (at midnight no less), I had him back in Michigan, and Ethan and Rebecca were picking him up from Detroit Metro.

While I think we have all breathed a sigh of relief that the wedding didn't happen, we are still seeing after effects of the wedding being called off.

The first thing we had to do was circle our wagons around Mark, and make sure that he was okay.  In all honesty, he had been manipulated and controlled by Niki for so long that he just felt free.  No more fear about not responding to her texts quickly enough, no more 2 a.m. Skype sessions because she would only talk to him when she had time, no more awkward times spent with her family where she would act like she loved Mark, but would then treat him like crap when they were alone.  He could hardly believe that he could dance to music again, sing, and actually wear his pajamas after church on Sunday.

And in all honesty, we had missed him and were so happy to have him back.  While he didn't get to spend his summer with us, we were happy that he got to spend our last two days at Interlochen with us.

After a Saturday shopping in downtown Traverse City and eating at Sleder's, we were happy to catch a picture with Octavio Mas-Arocas, Glo's IP conductor for most of the summer.  Notice the cute card she drew him?

And it can never be a bad day when Grace Barry is with us!

Les Preludes.  Yes, I shed the usual tears.

Knowing that Mark was okay, John and I had to do damage control in regards to the amount of money we had already paid for the wedding "luncheon", an event that Niki had assigned us.  We had to try and return decorations and cancel floral orders, as well as try to recoup as much money as possible from the event space.  Ethan got on the phone, acting like Mark, and explained that he had been dumped in order to get our money back from honeymoon hotel reservations.  In the end, we lost about $2,000, but as John says, it's a small price to pay for Mark's happiness.

Something else to remember:  it's better a broken engagement than a broken marriage.

One thing that we couldn't recoup:  the time that we had lost this summer.  Time away from Mark, and time doing so much to get ready.

Really, it was hard on all of us when, try as we might, we couldn't get Niki to come out to Pennsylvania or Michigan for part of the summer.  We even found jobs for her.  Instead, she insisted that Mark quit his job here and move to Utah....which he did.  We hated that he left, we hated the situation that she put him in, and he hated being out there.  In the end, we can't get that time back.

For me, a large part of my summer was spent making the bridesmaids' dresses for Johannah and Glo. Niki's mom had picked up some fabric in Ecuador and sent it to us.  It was the strangest fabric, and in fact when I took it to the fabric store to have it identified (so that I could find a suitable pattern for the fabric), the lady in charge had no idea what it was.  In the end, it was decided that it was a thick polyester that had stretch...but in only one direction.  I could hardly imagine my girls, in Utah, in the desert heat, in August, wearing these super thick, heavy, polyester dresses.  However, I kept my mouth shut...at least to Niki.

The pattern we chose.

I guess in the end I was so sick of being disregarded that I had to find my moments to challenge her authority.  She had told me that I couldn't use the back side of the fabric which actually was prettier than the tacky, shiny front of the fabric.  From a distance, it looked like suede.  I decided to use it as a contrast border when Rebecca and I found a pattern that we liked for the dresses.  Too, Niki wanted all the bridesmaids to have sleeves on their dresses.  Glo wanted hers sleeveless, and so it would be.

I haven't sewn in at least thirty years, so don't think I wasn't completely doubting of my abilities.  I decided to sew the dress in muslin first, just to see if I had any chance of being successful.  The funny thing was that I hadn't bought enough muslin for the entire dress.  Don't judge--like I said, I haven't sewn in thirty years, and I didn't bother to check the back of the pattern for the amount of fabric needed.  So, I happened to have some leftover cotton fabric from a quilt that I made Johannah.  It was white, and actually looked quite lovely once I finished the bodice.

I could hardly believe that this turned out as nicely as it did.  I found that sewing was like a combination of two things:  riding a bike (I hadn't forgotten the basic idea), and cooking (just follow the recipe exactly).

 I ended up being even more short of fabric when I needed to add the contrast band on the bottom.  Turns out, those pleated skirts use YARDS of fabric.  So, I pulled out some stretchy Halloween fabric from a shirt I unsuccessfully tried to sew for Johannah years ago.

After I added the sleeves (in different lengths, trying to figure out what looked best), Glo again stated that she didn't want sleeves, and I was just fine with that.  Little did I know the trouble this decision would cause me later.  Too, the neckline was too high, so I tried to adjust that also.

I could hardly believe that I put in the zipper perfectly the first time.  Yep, first zipper ever.

The dress looked pretty good, and I didn't figure that I needed to finish all the details (although everyone felt that I should, because the dress actually looked really good).  Rebecca had been sent several yards of fabric for her maternity dress, and I had two different lengths of fabric for my girls' dresses.  So, before I left for Interlochen, we laid out the pattern pieces to try and figure out who needed how much fabric.  We had to throw details to the wind like cutting on the grain and cutting in the direction of the stretch.  There just wasn't enough fabric.

So, armed with the fabric and my sewing machine (and a few pathetic supplies), we packed everything and headed to Michigan.

Next big problem.  The girls and I were housed in a room built for one person for the first three weeks we were there.  There was absolutely no room to do anything with the dresses.  Shoot, there wasn't even a table.  Unfortunately, this left me with nothing to do but to stress.  I knew that I would need time to make these dresses, and my time was limited.  When we finally moved into our house (with only three weeks to go), I was cutting out the fabric before I had even unpacked my suitcase.

And for the next three weeks, I did nothing but work and sew.  Literally.  I would get up at  5 a.m., head to work until 3 p.m., come home and sew until 9 p.m., and go to bed.  Rinse and repeat.

It shouldn't have taken me nearly so long, but that fabric was a nightmare.  It didn't cut well, the one-way stretch made everything impossible, and sewing it?  Several times, I just held my breath and hoped for the best.  It wasn't until I tried to iron the interfacing to the fabric that I saw it for what it really is:  plastic.

When I showed a nurse friend this picture the next day, she brought a dish towel with her to give to me to use.
Trust me, the dish towel did little to help me iron polyester.

The hardest part for me was abandoning the pattern and trying to make the dress what the girls and I wanted.  Since I don't know how to line a dress (helpful for sleeveless dresses), I had to just create an interfacing for the armholes and neck.  Unfortunately, because I couldn't iron the interfacing down once it was sewn in, I had to topstitch it in place which showed.  However, when I finished Glo's dress, I was mildly proud of my abilities.  I felt that I had created something quite lovely from something quite horrible.  In fact, when I showed this dress to my nurse friends, they could hardly believe that I had actually made it.  One told me that if it was in different fabric, she would totally buy it in a store, and another actually asked me if I would make her one.  Hooray!

Of course, I still had to make Johannah's, and I hadn't made a dress for her from the muslin, so I was a bit worried.  I just didn't have time to do it.  In the end, I hardly had anything left.

Johannah's didn't turn out as nicely as Glo's, mostly because the sleeves looked silly, and the neckline was wrong for her body type.  However, I have no doubt that my girls would have been the belles of the ball at that reception.  In other words, try as Niki might to make her bridesmaids look bad, she had not succeeded!

So, returning to our sad story of Mark's breakup, I was devastated to think of the countless hours I had spent making these dresses.  Hours when I could have been enjoying the beauty of Northern Michigan, hours that I lost with my girls, hours of sleep that I didn't get.  And the stress?  Getting the dresses done was always hanging over my head.  I felt that my summer was literally sewn into the seams of those dresses.  Those. Stupid. Dresses.

So when we were packing up to leave Michigan, I didn't know what to do with them.  The mean, devilish side of me wanted to send them to Niki with a note--thanks for ruining my summer--but at this point my anger was turning to pity.  I knew the girls would never wear them again, but I couldn't just throw them away.  Well, I could, but they needed a bit of ceremony....or perhaps I just needed a bit of closure.

So, I carefully folded them up into the trash can, and we had a memorial service in the kitchen of our rental home.  I did it all.  Hand over my heart, other hand saluting while we sang a couple of sad hymns.  The kids even brought out their instruments and played along with the singing.  It tore me up to see them thrown away, but only because they represented so much to me.

Finally, one expense we couldn't recoup was the honeymoon cruise.  It was too late to cancel according to Carnival, but it was only $50 to change a name on a reservation.  My first thought was Ethan, but he already had tickets to Florida for that week.  My next thought was John (because let's all admit it--he loves cruising the most), but he couldn't get off work.  Fine, I figured I would send one of the girls, but which one?  Wait, I would just pay for the additional sister and send all three together.  Nope.  As it turns out, Carnival has a policy that anyone under 18 can't sail with anyone under 25.  Not sure what I would have done if I had wanted to cruise with my two young sons...when I was only 23, but oh well.

That left one person:  ME!  Although I probably enjoy cruising the very least of anyone in the family, John encouraged me to go and just relax.  After the crazy summer I had had, it would be good for me to get away.

So, the next day I bought plane tickets for Mark and me to go on his honeymoon cruise.  We even flew into Tampa the day before, so I spent a luxurious morning laying around a gorgeous pool in downtown Tampa.  It felt absolutely surreal, but in the Kennedy tradition of life, THIS IS WHAT WE DO, BABY!!

Thankfully, it wasn't hard to make diving arrangement with our friends, Mac (in Grand Cayman) and Sergio (in Cozumel).  I started the steroids, and we were off.

We had a great time, eating lots of delicious food, and diving.  Man, we both love diving, and it was like a dream being underwater again.  My favorite pic of the dives?

A gorgeous Eagle Ray

This pic, however, runs a close second :-)

While it was of course fun, there was something even more beautiful about it.  In fact, I would call it a tender mercy of Heavenly Father.  In feeling so bad about not having Mark with us all summer, I was given an entire week of time together.  Nobody else, just us.  Coming off of a very disappointing, very tragic fairy tale, I couldn't have asked for a happier ending.