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A past that lasts
Thursday, September 27, 2018 at 03:44PM 
When TG and I took Audrey and Dagny to the Georgia Aquarium last June for Dagny's fourth birthday -- that was the same trip where we visited the grave of JonBenét Ramsey -- we were less than a week away from our thirty-ninth wedding anniversary.
Since my family lived for several years in the Atlanta area in the '60s and '70s, as we drove toward our hotel I began to notice Interstate signs bearing the names of roads that were familiar to me.
We often visit Atlanta; most recently we'd been there last September, a few days after Andrew and Brittany became engaged, to take in a Braves game at SunTrust Park.
And in November, it will be two years since Erica and I spent the weekend in Atlanta, and visited with old friends. (That was a few days before Erica and Chad -- now Mr. and Mrs. Porter -- started dating.)
In fact, on that trip, on an insanely sunny, too-hot-to-be-November afternoon, I took Erica to see the church where TG and I were married on June 16, 1979.
I hadn't been back there since 1987, when I flew alone from our home in the Chicagoland area to attend a church service and a dinner-on-the-grounds reunion of folks from "back in the day."
Naturally, as Erica and I drove toward the former Forrest Hills Baptist Church in Decatur, I wasn't sure what to expect as far as how the church property, which loomed so large to me both as a teen and a young adult (in my early childhood I was subjected to no church influence whatsoever), would look after thirty years.
I knew that the church building -- built around 1970 under the leadership of the late Curtis W. Hutson, the pastor who married TG and me -- and grounds had been sold to another congregation in the early '90s.
One might be justified in expecting that any manner and number of changes would have been made in the intervening years.
And so I was more than taken aback when Erica and I drove onto the property in November of 2016 to find that, with the exception of glass front doors leading into the sanctuary instead of the solid white ones that I remembered, the exterior of the building had not changed.
At all.
Ditto for the grounds, which are virtually unchanged since the first time I saw them, when I was fifteen years old.
On that occasion, a kind caretaker of the property noticed that we had parked and were looking around, and we told him why we were there. He offered to take us inside, where things had undergone considerable cosmetic alteration.
The sanctuary is now a different color scheme, and the platform has been built out to be larger than before. The aforesaid glass doors replaced solid ones leading in and out of both the vestibule and the building itself.
Other than that, I gazed in a quiet fit of sentimentality at the place where TG and I had stood when we took our vows thirty-seven years before.
Fast-forward seventeen months to early June of 2018, when at my urging TG steered our car again to the church where we were married.
TG hadn't seen the place since our wedding day; Audrey had never seen it at all and of course, little Dagny was a newcomer too.
I took pictures of the classic fan-shaped church architecture, noting the right side of the building as you're looking at it, where in my wedding gown and carrying a large bouquet of gardenias, I made my way around on the sidewalk with my bridesmaids, so that my groom wouldn't see me until I walked down the aisle.
Cars going by on the road fifty yards away slowed and a few honked; everyone loves a June bride.
On one's wedding day I daresay no one pictures one's children and grandchildren standing in the same place, nearly forty years in the future.
On this day there was no one with keys available to let us look around inside.
So I took pictures of TG looking up at the door of the fellowship hall where we held both our rehearsal dinner and, the next day, our distinctly Southern reception of tiny sandwiches and assorted finger foods, served with punch and, of course, wedding cake.
TG walked on the breezeway where we came out into a warm June afternoon, holding hands, having changed into regular clothes, TG holding his rented tux in a plastic suit bag, just before the remaining revelers pummeled us with rice and we boarded TG's 1974 Toyota Celica for the trip to Charleston, South Carolina, for our honeymoon.
Many of the people I loved in that place, at that time, are gone. People who made a profound difference in my life. So there was a poignant, wistful part of the experience too. As much as bricks and mortar can be a part of someone, that church is a part of me.
They say you can't go back. And yet we did, and it was special, and I am glad.
And that is all for now.
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Happy Thursday
Reader Comments (6)
I love this! It really is special to be able to go back and see places that had such meaning in our youth. The church I grew up and was married in is only 20 minutes from my home. I've been in it many times since our wedding and I must admit that I have kind of taken that for granted.
That picture of you and TG is the best and I think you need to print it! (And - you two look great after almost 40 years of marriage)
@Mari ... I'm sure you haven't taken that church for granted but it is so nice that any time you want, you can go and see it, and show the kids and grandkids where it all began for you and Bob. Thanks for the compliment! Audrey took that picture. With my camera, haahaha xoxo
What a beautiful church in which to be married! It looks like a Baptist church. It is lovely and I bet your wedding was lovely as well. I love the picture of you and TG...….you and TG have never lost your style!
@Cheryl ... Yes; it was the Forrest Hills Baptist Church in Decatur, a suburb of Atlanta. I don't know if we still have style but we hope to have substance ... and a fair amount of longevity. xoxo
Such a wonderful visit.
I am lucky in that "my" church is not too far away and I can visit it any time I want too.
My grandfather preached there, my parents were married and buried from there.
I was married there, my children were baptized there and one married there, as was my little sister.
The church building hasn't changed much, except they have one of those stupid, big video screens in front with the words from the hymns so people don't have to hold and sing from their hymnals, which upsets me, but...every time I enter the sanctuary, I will have that peaceful feeling I have always had.
@Judy ... I've never understood why anyone would have a problem with singing out of a hymnal. Too lazy to hold it? Afraid of tradition? We still sing hymns straight out of the hymnbook and I wouldn't want it any other way. xoxo