Part IV: The Wedding, the Honeymoon and the Story Continues

So here we are, today is the day, July 30^th. 21 years ago we were married…. barely.

See everyone has an opinion on what happened just before we got married. Some have been very stalwart in their opinion of the situation. But Clare and I know the truth.  Twenty-one years after the fact, it’s more of a joke and we laugh about it than anything else. Oh, and I might add, it was really by the grace of God that we were married.

Let’s start with the engagement. We got engaged on Christmas Eve, 1993. I proposed that evening and she heartily accepted. So then, everything changed after that Christmas season. I had finally graduated from college and I needed to find a full time job. Yeah, I got engaged before I had a stable source of income. I really didn’t think I could wait any longer. Clare had been instrumental in every step of the process and considering she was ready to get married back in 1991, she was done waiting and could wait no longer. A "move it or lose it" type of situation, to put it nicely.  And I don't mean she was going to break up with me, she was going to do something drastic, like maybe really knock me out and I would awake before the priest waiting for "I do."

Over the next five months, our lives changed dramatically. Before this we were both living with our respective sets of parents, with minimal responsibilities. From January to May, I found my first full time job as a contract drafter at TWA, then later in early May of 1994, I started a new job at Burns and McDonnell engineering, and I finally had quit the grocery store I had worked at for 5 ½ years. I also moved out of my parents’ house the month before we got married, and I got the house ready for us to start our new life. She moved in just before the wedding, well, at least her stuff did, she didn’t actually move in until after we were married.

So just think about this… within a relative short six months, I graduated school, started to work full time, got engaged, moved out on my own, got married and it was not soon after, because of the way we chose to live our lives, my wife could become pregnant at any time. Yes I had faith, but I am really going to be honest with you. Reality really punched me pretty hard in the stomach, and I would say I experienced several nervous breakdowns. Now, if it comes up in anyway, I do not recommend people do this, especially younger folks. Give it some time. Don’t try to change everything in one year. I personally don’t think its healthy.

What matters is that we made it. We got married and started a new life on our own, well barely. Let me tell you another story, concerning an extremely crucial part of the wedding ceremony.

See we had planned everything, with the usual parent’s involvement. Clare had many friends and family to help her decide on plans, food, reservations, dresses, shoes, etc. Extensive plans were made by many people to make this a wonderful day for Clare, and me, yeah I was in there somewhere. Anyway, we also tried to do everything as frugal as we could, but still have it be nice.

Through all this planning, which occurred over months, not once did ANYONE, ever mention the marriage license. Yes,… the marriage license. See I really think that every newborn child is born with the inherent knowledge that before you get married, you must go apply for the marriage license. All children must have this, except me, and for that matter, Clare.

Let’s see… hmm… I come from a family with one brother who was nine years older than me, and he got married like five years before I did. I think I signed the marriage license, because I was the best man, but that was about it. I didn’t ask him, “Well, dear brother, how did you come by this legal documentation of your lawfully wedded matrimony…” No one said a thing. You would think that the family that has already experienced five weddings would have mentioned something over the weeks and months leading up to the wedding that, yes you need to get a marriage license. You would even think over the many meetings we had with the priest to take personality and compatibility tests and go through counseling that he might mention the …marriage license. But to no avail. With all the friends that we had, especially Clare, some of whom had already tied the knot, you would think someone; somewhere would say something about the… marriage license.

Marriage license??? … yes… listen to the sweet silent chirp of crickets in the night… not one thing was ever said, and it did not occur to anyone in our lives, and most importantly, to ourselves that we needed to apply for a marriage license. This is one of those things that I think God allows to happen to teach generations of would be marrieds. Clare and I were supposed to cross over the vast stretches of the world proclaiming to yet to be newlyweds “Make sure you have your marriage license…” Let’s just say I smelled a lot of coffee after that… and when I smell coffee I will never think about it the same way. If you don’t know I mean by that, you are very welcome to ask Clare yourself. I will keep my comments to myself, where they belong and I will take them to my grave, out of respect for people I love dearly.

OK, OK, let’s just cut to the chase. I left work early the day before our wedding, met Clare and we raced to the courthouse in Independence and pleaded with the judge to issue us one. That was where I wrote my first piece of legal literature, with flowery words on how we were ignorant of the law and irresponsible for not obtaining a license on time. Poor Clare had been in tears the whole time, and lets just say “I felt like an idiot.” was a gross understatement. Now, after that, we could breath just a bit. We had the rehearsal dinner. That went OK. No drama there, geeezzz. Then we all rested and the next day was the wedding.

Yes the wedding, in the grand scheme of things it was nice, wonderful, beautiful, touching, and lifetime worth of wonderful memories of that beautiful day. But really I was going to kill someone. Yes, I was so nervous, and on the verge of a complete mental breakdown, that one of my very good friends made of very keen insight. He informed me that I was so uptight no one could squeeze a greased ball bearing up my anterior. And let's not forget to mention Clare, she woke that Saturday morning with a red bloodshot eye, like she had pink eye or something. Poor woman, she had already gone through enough and then this.

Let's just say the whole experience was like this. Have you ever seen the movie “My Big Fat Greek Wedding”? Well let me tell you, that movie is based on Clare and I, almost to the tee. Except, replace Greek Orthodox with Roman Catholic, and there really were not so many Nicks and Nickies as there were Mary's. And it wasn't a zit, but pink eye. Yes, it was that crazy and that awesome at the same time.

So yes, the wedding happened, and then the reception. It was a lot of fun. Clare was having her fill of champagne, and I refused to drink because I was driving us to our hotel afterwards and I was overly cautious about her safety on her special night. We didn't need any accidents or run-in's with the police, we had already been through enough. But then it was there late at night, towards the end of the reception I did the most romantic thing that would make any blushing bride's heart melt with tenderness and affection, I sang “Foxy Lady” by Jimmy Hendrix to Clare, out on the dance floor, ...sober, ...while the DJ hid under his table in embarrassment.

Then there was the Honeymoon, yes we made it through the night, after people were banging on our hotel door. Yes those lovely Messer people had figured out where we were staying, like it wasn't obvious, and I guess they wanted to come in and join the party. Ah, but they waited and knocked to no avail. The other side of the door just remained mysteriously silent.

The next day, after the wedding, we did some opening presents and then headed down to the Ozarks to stay at Clare's Aunt and Uncle's Lake house. It was really nice, but there was the water issue, you had to turn the water on outside with a special tool contrived by my wife's uncle and there was a certain way to turn on the water. Unfortunately I was not smart enough to figure out how to turn it on all the way, thus the pressure was not enough to fill the hot water tank, thus the whole time we were down there we only had cold water. Then we tried to swim. Not sure what happened, but the water was full of dead minnows, yummy. So that didn't go to well. After our failed attempts at swimming, Clare decided to lay out on the dock while I tried not to do anything stupid. It was at that moment that one of those notorious Ozark horse flies landed on Clare. I remember her panicked voice calling out to me, “Dwight, Kill it., Kill it”. I ran up to her and believe you not I had never seen a fly that big. I exclaimed “Wow he is huge, I can even see the hairs on his butt!” That was it, she jumped up off the dock and ran into the lake house screaming, as I ran after the horse fly trying to catch it as a specimen of great interest. Needless to say we cut our honeymoon short by two days and just went home. We were exhausted and worn out, but we got rested up the rest of that week and we began our new life.

Well that's how it happened, so yeah… I didn’t become an archaeologist like Indiana Jones and search for long lost relics in the Mediterranean, Europe or Asia, I didn’t leave the States to go live with nomads in the Mongolian steppes, living in a yurt, herding sheep, cattle and goats from the back of a horse with an AK-47 strapped to my back (yes, I wanted to do this…) I didn’t enlist in the Marines or the Army during the first Persian Gulf War (Clare said no…and they may have not taken me anyway), I didn’t become a writer for TSR (Dungeons and Dragons – I still think they stole my idea for a Greek and Roman source book, that’s a whole story in itself), I didn’t start my own war-games miniature business, nor did I become a game developer (yet), animator (yet) or a published writer (yet), but I did marry the greatest woman I know, full of beauty, wisdom, love, patience and caring.

Well, when I started writing this story last week, I had no idea how it was going to turn out. And where do you end it? The story continues. This blog is about “Married with Asperger's” It mainly focuses on my interpretation of Clare and I, our life together, raising five unique and incredible children, and especially our marriage. See Clare is nuerotypcial, as we Aspies like to say, and I am the alien in a strange land. She has been my social and cultural translator and guide in life since we first met, an ambassador for a stranger in a strange world. Many times I have had to ask “What did they mean by that, or why do they do this?” She has been there for me in my darkest days and shared my brightest moments. There is no other person I would want to be with me through my life. I truly do believe that she is a gift from God. I asked for her back on that June day in 1991, and God gave her to me.

In our years of research about both Autism and Asperger's there is a high rate of divorce among couples in which one of the spouses has Asperger's. It is so unfortunate and breaks my heart. The odds are really against us, but we rely on faith and love to get us through. My feelings about being lonely and at the same time having difficulty with social interaction is just one of the great dichotomies of Asperger's. You desire close relationships, you desire friendships, but in most cases it is very difficult to maintain them and to have reciprocal relationships.

I always make the comment that the Dwight you see today is the Dwight that Clare has spent the last 24 years working with, listening to, counseling, understanding and loving. It has been her tender heart, her willingness to try and understand where I am coming from and what I am that began the change in our marriage. It all started when we were trying to learn about both of our sons who were diagnosed with Autism at a very young age. We watched a video about Temple Grandin. ( Look her up on Google). As we watched the video, I told Clare I didn't see anything odd with the way she explained the way the autistic brain worked. How I could visualize things, how I processed information and input new information all the time, constantly. I definitely related to the social issues. That was when Clare began to realize that there was something different about me too. Our marriage changed drastically after that. I will admit it was struggle before and still is at times, but through understanding life has been much better for the both of us. With her wanting to help me, it softened my heart. By both of us being transparent with each other, by having soft tender hearts, by love and definitely by our faith in Jesus Christ, are we still married today. She said to me long ago when I was going through a difficult time, “Honey, I will never leave you.” Do you know the power of that statement, especially after you have been an ugly person. It gave me a hope to continue living. She gives me hope and helps me every day cope with this world. I can never repay a debt like that back.

And the story continues...