At My Wedding My Mother Said Uniforms Were Not for Me Until Hundreds of Service Members Rose to Their Feet

What I had not planned was my mother.

I should have known better. I had known her for thirty-seven years.

She was seated in the third row on the left when I turned the corner at the far end of the aisle and saw her for the first time that day. She was not crying. She was not smiling with her hand pressed to her heart. She was leaning toward my aunt Diane, one hand raised to cover her mouth, and she was laughing. Not the polite, suppress-it laugh of someone caught off guard by something small. The real thing, fully expressed, complete with the slight backward lean that meant she found whatever she was looking at genuinely absurd.