Three Weddings and NO Funerals: Part Two

Her grandmom had a place at the seashore, right on the beach, I believe. And her family used to go there in the summer when she was a kid. They became friendly with other families who had shore houses in that block, and one of the families had a son Stephanie's age. His name was Justin. He was kind of shy.

As they grew into teen years, she grew beautiful. I mean really beautiful (to the point that I wondered why she never pursued a career in modelling) and Justin grew smitten. The story is that it used to be when he was coming up onto the beach out of the water he developed the habit of looking at the deck next door to see if Stephanie was there. Sometimes she was. Sometimes she wasn't. Oh, Justin was smitten. But since he was shy, Stephanie never knew. She thought he was just one of the guys in the shore crowd.

The kids grew up and got summer jobs and spent less time at grandmom's shore house. Stephanie went off to college and met a guy and had a little girl and then the thing with the guy went kaput. There were some hard times for Stephanie and her family as they dealt with all kinds of difficult situations. Then, it seems, summer before last they took some extended time at the shore house. The seaside worked its magic in more ways than they'd expected.

For one day, coming out of the water, Justin's old teen-aged habit kicked in. He glanced at the deck. And after all this time, there was Stephanie. No longer shy, he went over . . . .

The wedding is this September. At the church at the shore, of course. With a pig roast on the beach afterwards. With the little girl in the wedding party.

All of this was revealed to the Good Guys last winter while I was working on Porcelainberry, The Quilt. (You may remember that we'd discovered porcelainberries on a guided dune walk down at the beach many years back -- probably around the time that Justin was first enamored with Stephanie, actually -- they grow among the reeds and the sedges and you have to kind of peer under the leaves at them. And then you see them -- how very beautiful they are.) I'd been aimlessly making blocks from batik strips I'd acquired through a swap, putting them together in combinations I fancied. And Joe came by and said, "That looks like porcelainberries!" He was right.

And as Stephanie's mom was sharing the story with us, I kept thinking about the quilt on my design wall at home, and knowing exactly where it was destined to go.

Be happy together, young friends. You surely deserve it.