I’d sat blushing and laughing through Jarrod’s brothers speeches, and I’d refrained from throwing a pitcher at my own brothers for what they’d said in theirs. They’d brought up all of my childhood transgressions, sharing how I’d once dropped a pair of scissors on Ammon’s foot that had ended up with him needing twelve stitches (accident), how I’d also thrown a bag of flour to him just before the scissor incident that had burst all over him so he’d had to go to hospital looking like Casper (also an accident, but we’d been baking cookies and I couldn’t be bothered to walk across the kitchen to pass him the flour), the CD incident (his fault), how Major had needed stitches in his head after I’d accidentally dropped my encyclopedia over the bannister of the stairs as I was skipping down them (kind of an accident), and finally how he’d ended up with a buzz cut when I’d spilled wax into his precious hair (not an accident). By the end, I wanted to crawl under the table and hide because it made me sound like a wreck, but Jarrod had kissed me while he was laughing, and it felt so good that I couldn’t have cared less if they’d recounted even more stories than they had.
There had been a discussion last month about what the first dance would be – the dad/daughter dance, or the first husband/wife dance. Jarrod had insisted that it would be the dad/daughter dance. So here we were, slowly moving to My Father’s Eyes.
Pulling me a bit closer, Dad rested his chin on the top of my head. “I’m proud of you, Katykins, so very proud of you. And she wouldn’t want you to be sad anymore.” When I pulled back to say something, he just shook his head. “She’s sitting up there on her cloud right now watching all of this, honey, and she’s loving every second and screaming at you to live your life.”
He was right, and until that moment I hadn’t realized that I wasn’t giving myself permission to actually live my life. I was happy – so fucking happy – but I was still living in the shadow of what had happened.
“Now, take a deep breath in,” he told me, waiting until I did it. “And let it out along with all the bad shit.”
The breath came out of me in a peal of laughter, and that final cloud lifted. It was only a year later that it would hit me that I hadn’t had another anxiety attack after that talk with him, and that I’d only had two nightmares. Even my OCD had gotten better.
After the song ended, Jarrod walked up to us, and Dad held my hand out to him. “There’s still time to run, Jarrod,” he told him seriously. When Jarrod just held onto me, he looked at him like he was crazy. “Seriously? You’re not even tempted? I’ve been married to her mother for thirty-one years, man. The ink on the certificate isn’t even dry yet, so you’ve got time to escape. See the height of those heels? You’ve got an easy getaway.”
Jarrod’s response was a deep rumble of laughter. “I’ve seen her run in shoes, Paul. Trust me, there’s no getting away.”
Shrugging, Dad started to make his way off the dance floor. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Pulling me into him, he looked over to the DJ and nodded. Then, as the opening notes of Cheer Down began, he said something that broke the tight tear control I’d had all day. “Thought I’d give her one of the most important jobs today.”
One by one they fell down my face, more than likely ruining my makeup and staining my dress with whatever foundation was dragged with them. The difference was, these were happy tears, ones that knew he was right because she was loving every second of this being our wedding song.
If you dissected the lyrics, it would probably shock most people that it was our first dance, but to me they were some of the most beautiful words ever written and revolved around loving someone unconditionally. To cheer down – to me – meant that you didn’t have to act happy if you weren’t. If you added that into the words written by Tom Petty, it meant that you didn’t have to act happy for the other person to love you. Jarrod had stuck with me through the darkest moment of my life, not expecting me to just be the happy-go-lucky person I was before it, and bringing me back to the person I’d been before. And I knew now what I’d known when the GYMP plan had been drunkenly jotted down on those napkins, I would take him however he came, unconditionally, so it was applicable from me to him, too.