All Brides Are Virgins, Aren't They?

Arising on a fine Saturday morning to find my love had already claimed the bathroom, I contemplated the day ahead. Vonda had warned me to dress comfortably in something simple and to wear comfortable shoes. She had been shopping with her mother before and knew how to prepare.

Fool that I was, I found it hard to believe that finding a dress to get married in would be all that hard. Little did I know!

Vonda's Mom, I'll call her Hanna from now on because typing 'Vonda's Mom' is a pain, tooted her horn outside the door, so the rest of the bridal party joined her for a trip to the Big City. Great Oaks is too small to support a bridal shop.

On entering the Big City, Hannah made directly to a bridal shop. Now how could a woman who was married nigh on fifty years ago and who's other daughter was married some fifteen years ago know the location of every bridal shop in the city and (I think) the stock list and size of every gown in the place.

Will I ever be able to spot the minute details that make a wedding gown totally unsuitable for it's intended use on my body? I thought they all looked pretty good - well all but a couple of them that actually had to be glued onto the breasts so they wouldn't fall down. Fashion is a curious thing.

It was kind of fun at first, getting undressed with Vonda has its charms, but it soon palls. I'm too short to make it on the runway and too impatient to keep changing outfits.

Consensus was achieved for Vonda at the third shop. I was starting to despair after forty-five minutes in the forth place when I spotted a dress that I instantly liked. They had it in the right size and I headed for the dressing rooms while the Moms were dissecting yet another confection and had Vonda zip me in.

I liked. I really liked. Vonda liked. It was our wedding, this was it. No. More. Shopping.

I'd have put my foot down then and there, but I was afraid I might fall over wearing three inch heels.

The Missing Mrs Major and her Granddaughter

One more week of frantic construction and things were in shape to invite guests to the place. The guests were invited - we limited it to forty people - the caterer was hired, the bridesmaids got to wear whatever the heck they wanted to wear, the fathers of the brides had rented their tuxes, The rooms were decorated. The week before the wedding was actually rather calm.

So calm, in fact, that we realized Mrs Major had not been doing anything remarkable for quite some time. Had we been abandoned once we had produced an heir to the old family home?

Would that be just too easy?

Vonda and I started to look through the family history. We were making steady progress in matching the names on the family tree with the pictures in the albums and the notations in the Bible. Whoever kept those records was pretty thorough; birth, death and marriage dates inscribed faithfully.

We found an entry for Atara Eden Frye, born June 12, 1909, which would make her Mrs Major's granddaughter. A granddaughter who ostensibly never married or died was a curiosity.

Or did she get married? Close examination of her entry in the Bible showed something had been erased where the husband's dual names were usually found.

Curious.

We had joined a couple of those trace your ancestors sites and put her name in. The little dots danced on the browser and then her birth certificate and a reference to a passport appeared on the screen.

Now that was different. The descendants of Mrs Major seemed to be homebodies. The only other references to passports we found were for men who immigrated and married into the family. Not a one of those passports was ever renewed, and their feminized names were duly listed in the records.

Not so Atara Eden Frye. Two pictures of the woman still survived. One as a darling two-year-old and another with her at the wailing wall in what was to become Israel. Why she was there or how she got there was a complete mystery. Everything I had learned about Mrs Major's clan led me to believe they never traveled far from home.

Yet there she was, holding the hand of little boy just about two years of age. A rather handsome gentleman, who obviously came from that region, was holding the child's other hand.

When you become intimate with a Jewish family, it doesn't take very long to realize how pervasive and pernicious antisemitism can be. To this day there are fanatics who just know that the Jews killed Jesus and all Jews are hawk-nosed merciless moneybags who will tempt a Good Christian Man into usury.

Some things don't change - just ask Shylock.

Had Atara Eden Frye been so bold as to marry a Jew in Palestine? Maybe even be converted. I knew that most Jews take a skeptical view of people converting to their religion, but there are always a few who feel the need. Could that account for the name being erased?

We probably would never know. There is only so much information you can find on such things, even in the on-line databases.

A Letter From The Lost

The next morning, still in my comfy but revealing nightgown, I strolled into the office with a second cup of coffee. I was just going to check Facebook since I hadn't any other plans, when I noticed one of the file drawers was open and one of the files was tipped at an angle so it stood out. I was sure the drawers were all closed when I went to bed last night.

Had Vonda been restless last night? She was over in the studio so there was no way to ask. When she concentrates neither the land line nor her cell phone have a prayer of attracting her attention.

Mrs Major! Of course!

Go to sleep with a question about the family history and wake up with something to point you to the answer if it was anywhere in the house. In that folder were several letters from Atara Eden Frye to her sister Amelia.

Thank you Mrs Major!
 

February 2, 1927
Dearest Emily,

Eden Atara Goldman
 

Have you ever sat quietly trying to think, to solve some mystery of the universe but succeed only in getting nowhere? You can't put your finger on just why you're getting nowhere, what seems to make your goals recede as fast as you pursue them. In fact, you sometimes forget you have goals until some infinitesimal irritation on the Astral Plain disturbs your repose.

Then the Astral Plane becomes the Astral Hill Country and that small irritation settles down between your shoulder blades just below or slightly above where your fingers can reach without dislocating a shoulder. Then, just as you are about to become a contortionist, someone special comes along and digs their thumbs in the exactly the right spot and starts to rub so that irritation vanishes, leaving you relaxed and refreshed.

That's what finding that letter felt like. That erasure in the family genealogy had bothered me more than I knew.

Thanks for the help, Mrs Major.