The Wedding and After

-Continued from last blog post, "Keep On Carrying On"-

Late November, the weekend after Thanksgiving, Michael and I wed in a small ceremony. Being so close to a major holiday and the short engagement period prevented most extended family from being able to attend. It was beautiful though, a day filled with love and happiness and freezing sleet rain.

Many of our friends also got married that year, so we were able to borrow some things from them--artificial flower petals that lined the aisle, tulle and ribbon, hurricane vases, candles, lights. It had always been my dream to get married in the small town church I had attended for the first eighteen years of my life, the one my grandfather helped build. The venue was free, as was the officiant, Michael’s grandfather who was a Church of Christ preacher in his own right.

The flowers and cake were gifted to us from my mother’s family. They stayed late the night before, making boutonnieres and bouquets by hand. Mom sewed the garter I wore. I had originally wanted to wear the dress my mother and grandmother had worn to their own weddings, but it was too fragile to undergo the cleaning and I would have to have it considerably altered. With the help of my soon-to-be brother-in-law, I was able to find a dress in my size on clearance at David’s Bridal, which my parents graciously bought for me. Mom and my Granny also made the food that was served at the reception. I wish that I remembered everything better, but all I can recall is sparkling grape juice, curried shrimp dip, and deviled ham dip, and of course the cake.

All the paper portions--the invitations, programs, and thank you’s I made myself.

Michael’s family was in charge of the tuxedos and rehearsal dinner. Michael’s mother Rhonda was a wedding planner and would have been so helpful in the planning process, but I was afraid to ask her for advice. I had already been so disruptive in their lives; they had uprooted and moved from two states away to be there for us when they found out I was pregnant. They barely knew me, and I was scared to know what they thought of me. His Aunt Kamee lent me her veil to wear, a touching borrowed item.

The night before the wedding, my best friend from high school kept the bridal party at her house. We watched “Lilo & Stitch” while I nursed Emerald, before going to bed at 9.30. Michael was taken out drinking with the groomsmen, vomiting in the Whataburger parking lot.

I had intentionally not had my dress taken in, partially because it would have taken longer than the six weeks I had before the wedding. More than that, however, I didn’t want to have to worry about how much I was going to eat at and still try to fit in the dress. An hour before I said my vows, I 86’ed half a veggie pizza that my uncle Robbie had brought for us. I learned later that Michael was being treated to a Chipotle burrito, a treat we did not have access to back in Lubbock and one he was sincerely considering being late to his own wedding so that he could really savor.

To the strains of “Gaelic Morn”, I tripped over the hem of my too-long dress to the alter. He choked back laughter; I stuck my tongue out at him. We were both so happy and so in love.

We shared a dinner at PF Changs that we ended up eating little of, full as we were from the reception, and spending the night in a hotel in Dallas. The next morning, we checked out early to have Thanksgiving with my Dad’s side of the family; I couldn’t be away from Emerald any longer than that, because she was still breastfeeding.

From our wedding, we got some monetary gifts that eased the financial burden of Christmas. There was no honeymoon; the day after our wedding, we loaded up our family and went back to our lives as though nothing had changed.

January I started back at school--mostly night classes, so that Michael could watch Emerald while I was gone. She was three months old. He had switched primarily to online classes. I applied for food stamps; we were denied, making too much at $1100 gross pay before taxes and everything was taken out; our student loans also counted against us, as that was money coming in even as it dug us deeper into a hole of debt. I tried again a few months later; this time we were approved for $60 per month.

That was more or less all we had to spend on groceries--the $60 from food stamps and the food allowances from WIC. Housing and utilities ate up the largest portion of our income.

I searched to no avail for cheaper places for us to move, but the cost of moving itself was not in our budget. Even if we could find an apartment at a reasonable rate in a decent neighborhood, we couldn’t afford the moving truck to get our belongings there, nor a new deposit, or activation fees for utilities. We couldn’t scratch out a savings from what we were making versus what we were spending, and that was all on essentials only. Gas back and forth to work was a blow to our expenditures as gas prices reached record highs.

I hadn’t been in this position before. Even if I had known someone that had needed assistance for food and housing and living expenses, it was not something people talked about. It was a secret shame, a personal failure kept close to the chest.

The lowest moment we had, to me at least, was when we ran out of formula again. The WIC monthly allotment was ten 12.6 cans of Similac powder, but without enough to supplement her meals with, Emerald was drinking more formula than they were providing. A few nights, all we had to give her was whip cream (sent home with us from a party) or coffee creamer mixed with water. I had to find something, someway to get food for our family.

From what research I was able to do on the computers at school, I learned there was a benevolence center at a nearby church. The website didn’t provide much information, just hours of operation and mission statement about Christly generosity. Our pantry shelves bare, we swallowed our pride and went to ask for help.

Michael and I had both spent a great amount time in our youth groups volunteering to help the needy through blessings ministries. I am sure there was that golden glow of being the “hands and feet” of Jesus, doing the Lord’s work as He had commanded to help those less than ourselves. The smug self-congratulatory attitude is painful to even look back on, particularly now when I have been on the receiving end of these church-wrought blessings.

The well-dressed and perfectly appointed man we spoke to had a quietly hostile air as he demanded questions about our income, why we were there. What had happened to the money that we had made, pointedly asking if we were on drugs, reiterating an offensive amount of times that we would not be given cash, with us reassuring time and again that we just needed food. Had we the choice, we would gathered what dignity we had left and haughtily beat a retreat; unfortunately, our next meal was reliant on our success here.

After an interminable amount of time where he judged whether or not we were worthy of the altruism of the church, we were given a brown paper bag and sent away, with the heavy implication that we were not to come around again.

I don’t even know if my professor recognized me in this setting, though I had been in his class for a few months already; he would see me again every Tuesday and Thursday for the rest of the semester.

We sat silently in the car for a long time, letting the misery of our situation roll over us. Dropping a couple of quarters worth of gas into the car, not even a full gallon, we went back to our little apartment to see exactly how much our pride had cost us.

A pound of dry pinto beans. A tall container of old-fashioned oats. A small tub of peanut butter, perhaps a sandwich or two worth, had we any bread. A couple of cans of off-brand chili and evaporated milk, which we didn’t have a can opener to open. A tiny bag of flour.

Dinner that night was boiled, unsweetened oatmeal with peanut butter mixed in. No matter how desperate we were, we vowed never again would we go to a church begging for scraps. Many churches will insist that we just had a bad experience; their congregation is populated only by kind, caring, selfless souls that would have treated us with dignity and respect.

To that, I say: the church I went to was not a bad church, the man that helped us not a bad man. There is a stigma associated with those that cannot help themselves, stereotypes that get built into your subconscious. Until you have been on the other side of table, it is hard to know exactly how hurtful the process can be.

June, after school let out, I got a part-time job working at a mall pet store cleaning out animal cages and emptying litter boxes. The paycheck honestly barely covered the cost of gas getting me back and forth between work, but I felt better contributing to the family and getting out of the house to be around other people. It was not a position that offered anything in the way of benefits.

My cesarean-section birth had left me with a condition called endometriosis, where the endometrial tissue of the uterus adhere to the scar left by the surgery. It transforms a traditionally unpleasant menstrual cycle into a debilitatingly painful ordeal. When I married Michael, I was no longer covered by my mother’s insurance, and the cost to put me on the insurance through Michael’s work was more than we were paying in rent and utilities combined, what with my being a woman of childbearing age and all.

At least our souls were safe now that we were no longer living in sin, so we had that going for us.

I couldn’t afford birth control, and Planned Parenthood was a non-option in the area, particularly for a student of the university. They performed abortions there so being seen nearby is simply not a viable choice. We tried to go there once, but it was gated and locked, patients allowed in by appointment only to prevent clients from being harassed or worse. My obstetrician provided free samples of birth control, but only with regular check-ups; I got as much as I could until I missed my appointment, and then simply stopped taking it all together.

It was hardly a surprise then when I discovered I was pregnant with our second in June when Emerald was 9 months old. The enthusiasm we received the second time around was hardly warmed from my first; the common thoughts seemed to be “does she not know what causes that?” and “can she not control herself?” The best we could hope for was a soul-weary sigh of my name, “Oh, Andie...” laden with disappointment.

Blessedly, this time was significantly easier on me. It was, in truth, the easiest of the three. There was no nausea, and while he kicked a lot harder Emerald’s butterfly flutters, he wasn’t an exceptionally active fetus. There was in fact limited discomfort the duration.

I was still considered an uninsured high-risk pregnancy. I got on Medicaid fairly quickly, aided in large part to the nurse practitioner from my ob-gyn’s office that helped me navigate the most difficult parts of it. For the first 36 weeks of my pregnancy, I was to be seen at the free clinic downtown; when I was in the home stretch, I would be transferred to the care of my trusted and loved doctor.

The free clinic was staffed by people that seemed to get it. There was no pity, no condemnation. They didn’t look at you like you were a failure; they rewarded and praised you for doing right by your baby, taking proactive care of your health. It was still a disheartening place to go to, banking on wait times you should budget a half a day at minimum per visit.

They treated me with a great deal of caution, particularly because of the gestational diabetes from the previous pregnancy. Having it one time could be coincidental, related to the size of the placenta or a complete fluke, but you have an increased risk of developing it in subsequent pregnancies. Instead of one glucose tolerance test performed at 24 weeks gestation, I was to take a full three-hour every month that I was seen so that they would catch it the moment it cropped up.

A GTT is a blood test to gauge how quickly your body is filtering sugars out of your bloodstream. I drink a 8-ounce, lukewarm cup of thick, syrupy liquid--it is somewhat reminiscent of overly-sweetened kool-aid, though you can request it in such repugnant flavors as lemon-lime, orange, or the incredibly ill-advised fruit punch. You must shotgun this monstrosity in under 2 minutes into a belly empty from fasting, then have your blood drawn four times over the course of three hours to see how your body is processing it. I have had the great displeasure of drinking it in every available flavor because there is one horrible fact about the test:

No matter how far into it you are, if you throw up, you have to start over.

Many can drink it to no ill effect. When I drank this vile evil, my whole body felt hot from the inside out. I had difficulty concentrating, I was dizzy and dying of thirst though I could not drink anything until after the test was complete. The worst part though was the nausea. All I could do is curl up into the smallest possible ball under the chairs of the waiting room in that dingy clinic and wait for the time to pass; it was cooler on the floor, and if I could cool off, I might be able to make it.

Several times, I couldn’t take it--once, just a pathetic ten minutes before my very last draw, I grew too ill to contain. I made an appointment for the next week and sobbed all the way home.

Four months pregnant, with a thirteen month old baby in tow, we came home from another demoralizing clinic appointment to find an eviction notice taped to our front door. One month to vacate the premises.

We had dutifully paid every month, sometimes having to make payment arrangements but the property manager had been understanding when that happened. The owner had not been so diligent on paying the bank, and now they were foreclosing. With absolutely no savings and no prospects, we had thirty days before we became homeless.

--Andie