Sahm I Am - By Meredith Efken Page 0,90

grab Mac’s dress,” and “yes, dear.” Like I said…tense.

Okay, back to the wedding…So finally, I was dressed, and so was McKenzie. The set was staged, the costumes were peopled, and I hurried backstage to climb up to the catwalk to prepare for my descent.

Do you know how impossible it is to climb a catwalk in a mermaid dress and spiked heels? Guess this is why actors do dress rehearsals in costume. There was absolutely no way for Becky and me to raise our feet high enough to reach the ladder rungs without just pulling our dresses past our waists and climbing in our never-minds. So here I was, minutes before the start of the processional (or descentional, rather), halfway up a ladder, with all the backstage guys gawking. Becky shimmied up pretty quick, but I snagged part of the dress on the ladder. Since it was all bunched up around my middle, I couldn’t see where it was stuck. Becky was now frantically motioning to me to hurry, but all I could do was shake my head and point to my dress, mouthing, I’m stuck!

By this time, the people below must have figured out my dilemma. They cued the musicians to continue the prelude, while Jeanine sat up in the catwalk on her moon, looking pale and faint. It should have occurred to me, I suppose, to wonder how she got up there. Turns out she had the good sense, before they opened the theater, to have the moon lowered. She climbed up and got a free ride. Grrrrr…She is the bride. She is the bride. She is the bride….

Anyway, back to me stuck on the ladder. I was starting to wonder if my arms were going to fall off, or if it might be more comfortable to simply kick my shoes off rather than stand on the ladder in heels. The thought of nailing the manic stagehand from last night with one of the spiked heels did appeal to me. Suddenly, I heard and felt someone below me on the ladder.

It was Tom, climbing the opposite side. When he reached the rung I was on, he slid his feet between mine. We were smashed together real close, with only the ladder between us. “I hear you’re stuck,” he said. I nodded at him. He wound his hand under a rung, into the folds of my dress, feeling along me and the ladder until he found where I was snagged. Then, he hooked one arm around the ladder so he could use both hands to free me.

Maybe it was being thirty feet off the ground, clinging to a ladder, with my husband’s hands fussing with my dress…but I had the most amazing case of butterflies I’ve had in years! I was having trouble breathing, and all I could think about was how close we were and the scent of his cologne. “You look great,” I whispered to him.

He gave me this big grin and glanced pointedly down at my still-exposed legs. “Thanks. So do you.”

Alas, he freed my dress too soon, and clambered back down the ladder while I resumed my climb up.

After that, things progressed as planned, mostly. McKenzie did look like a fairy princess—in an overdone toy-dress-up-kit sort of way, but cute nonetheless. When she reached the front of the theater and climbed the steps to the stage, having scattered rose petals down the aisle, she turned to watch Morris on the horse, and the moment that dumb horse stepped on one of her rose petals, McKenzie started wailing, “The horsey is squishing my flowers!” As the audience laughed, I tried to quiet her. But she would have none of it. “Bad horse! Naughty horse! You’re gonna get a spanking!” Her voice sailed right over “Ride of the Valkyries” as if it were “Brahm’s Lullaby.”

By now, we’d lost control of both the audience and the flower girl. I didn’t know what to do—try to calm her down or take her backstage. Tom’s great-aunt sitting in the front row solved the problem for me. She offered McKenzie a chocolate kiss, which promptly shut off the tears and made the woman my hero for life. McKenzie’s chomping on the chocolate drop left her with a brown smear around her mouth and a little stain on her dress, which belied the idea that she was “mature for her age”—but I can live with that.

Dulcie

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From:

Connie Lawson

To:

SAHM I Am

Subject:

[SAHM I AM] TOTW May 23: Resolving Conflicts

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My SAHM