A Regret

I don’t want to ever live with regrets. Regrets are for suckers. But I just put my foot inside my mouth: I have one regret in my life…

The other night, a clink of the glasses brought me back to my wedding night. I always said to friends that my wedding was one of the funnest weddings I had ever been to. It was a full day of festivities. Although it was not as long as an Indian wedding that spanned through days, Chinese weddings was pretty fun though. My wedding date was considered as a good day to marry, according to the lunar calendar, but it was a Friday. We didn’t care. I woke up with rain pouring from the sky, and everyone told me it was for good luck. I started out the day wearing my mom’s Chinese gold wedding dress and lots of gold bangles like Mr’ T’s wife. Tea ceremony assumed after the bridesmaids challenging the groom at entry. My future groom, C, was supposed to gain entry by professing his love for me by shouting upstairs (where I was preparing) 10 times “I love you” in Chinese. Chinese was not his first language but he easily passed the test. The crowd was satisfied.

Upon his entry was the tea ceremony: The bride and groom kneeled down to give tea to the elderlies starting with my grandma. Then it was his Mom, my parents, my uncles and aunts, siblings, cousins…Then came some speeches from the elderlies, whoever wanted to speak. C’s older cousin stood up and said, “C, now you are the head of the household, you will be in charge of a lot of things. But don’t forget Wen is the neck of the household, wherever she turns, you follow…” Everyone laughed. After some lighthearted and heartfelt speeches, breakfast was served, Chinese way. It was my fav, dim sum!

After a hearty breakfast, 20 cars left our neighborhood to head to the church. By that time, rain had stopped a while ago and the ground was just wet, but manageable. I changed into the white wedding dress and was professionally-photographed when my mom placed the veil onto me. I then was escorted and shoved into a classic fancy car with a big balloon of dress! Although C and I were not particularly religious, I always knew I would get married in a church, ever since I was young. And he agreed. The church wedding was beautiful but brief. Then came a whole bunch of photo-taking opportunities again. We then returned back to my parents’ house for an appetizer-filled lunch. During the fun chaos of relatives-mingling, our family dog sneaked out of the front door and I found myself running around the neighborhood in my white pouffy dress yelling his name for 30 minutes, along with other families and friends. That silly dog was found sniffing a bush on the other side of our neighbor’s house. So much for a relaxing afternoon before changing, yet again, back to the Chinese wedding gown. Upon arriving the Chinese restaurant where the 10-course Chinese banquet, more mingling and checking up on the cake and center pieces. I was supposed to have two changes of clothes after the 3rd and the 7th course during the meal (a red Chinese mandarin-collared high-slit dress and a shinny silver-colored evening gown with a tiara, no less, respectively). This was late 1990s, so we placed a disposable camera at each table for our guests to snap fun memories. Out of a lot of the half-drunk shots, the funniest picture ever developed out of those 12 cameras was an artistic shot taken by my girlfriends. The picture took place under four bathroom stalls in the restaurant’s women’s bathroom with four pairs of legs with underwears hanging on top of each pair of high-heeled shoes. I believe I still have that picture somewhere in the house, haha! I’ve got to find it!

My dad gave a touching speech at some point, and I changed into the first outfit after the soup course to assume the rounds of table-toasting. To avoid the bride and groom getting drunk too early of the night, we toasted with cold tea with ice in hard liquor glasses. Then prior to the end of the meal was the cutting of the cake. We did have some fun with the cake-cutting pictures. Our outfits were spared though, thank goodness for him as he only had one outfit for the whole day. But at that point, we didn’t care, we were having too much fun! C and I barely ate, even there were 10 courses of delicious Chinese food. But we were immensely happy. He was half drunk when he carried me through the threshold of the hotel room. He accidentally slammed my arm to the textured-wallpaper and we saw blood. Nevertheless, it was a fantastic day that started with rain, continued with a lost dog and ended with blood. In few days’ time, we would travel back to my homeland and did a second wedding all over again for another 100+ friends and family there, sans another church wedding.

29 years later, I find myself fast-forwarding the 25-year courtship in my mind after we succumbed to the devastating statistic of divorce rate of families with a special needs child (80%-87%):

I regret for not grieving the special needs diagnosis with him.

I regret for not connecting with him during hard times.

I regret for not checking in with him more often to see how he was doing.

I regret for making date nights another item to check off on my checklist.

I regret for not stopping to ‘smell the roses’ along the way.

Most of all: I regret for not putting our marriage a priority.

But, I do not regret any of the efforts that we put in to get our daughter to where she is today. I guess if ‘something’s got to give’, it had to be our marriage…

As I sip my tea on this lonely, quiet night in my apartment, if ever I want to repeatedly apologize to C, it’s this: I am so sorry for not knowing how to ‘marriage’. If only I knew…