Front Porch: Wedding plans are happy news for mother

My youngest son is getting married.

This is happy news. The couple has been heading in this direction for the past three years, so it’s not exactly a surprise. At a party last month, the formal proposal came. Friends and relatives have been sending congratulations in person and on social media. A wedding date has been selected and preliminary plans are forming for the event.

I am so pleased for them, that they are experiencing this joy in their lives, that we live in an America where two men can experience what not too long ago was forbidden to them – marriage, the legal protections that it affords and the social status that an official union provides in society. And fairness.

I’m not naive. I know there are many who do not look at this kindly, who do not see this as I do, but there is no room for them in my line of sight right now. What I see is my son Sam being happy, reaching for this next stage in his life, as millions of couples in love have done before him.

There was the courtship. Ryan was ready for marriage before Sam was. Not that he wasn’t committed, but Sam has had some broken-heart experiences, and wanted to go slowly, wanted them both to be sure there was something deeper forming after the first blush of infatuation, something that could endure.

Ryan agreed and said he would wait, but then he’d like a proposal. And maybe a cake rather than a ring. They dated for two years and lived together in Ryan’s tiny apartment – complete with Old English sheepdog – for a year after that. “If any cracks in the relationship were going to show up, life all on top of one another in that apartment was surely the test,” Sam told me.

Test passed.

Late this spring they moved into a duplex. Elbow room at last, not to mention a spare bedroom where guests can stay. My husband and I were their first overnight visitors, though we did have to share space with our granddoggie, who is queen of all sitting and sleeping surfaces wherever she dwells. We didn’t mind at all.

They had a housewarming party on July Fourth. Some of Sam’s friends were in cahoots with him, as he planned the proposal for that day. A neighbor arranged to stash a cake made specially for the day – it was shaped like a wedding ring, covered in gold fondant, with these words written on it: Will You Marry Me?

During the party, the cake was brought out and Sam dropped to one knee and held it out to Ryan. So there it was, the proposal and the cake. There were tears and cheers (and an acceptance of the proposal, I should add) – and, this being the social media era – a cellphone video of the whole experience, enabling parents and friends not living in Seattle to be able to see it happen.

Conversations are now taking place about the actual wedding, set for next year. They decided the ceremony itself will be very small – the grooms, two witnesses and parents. But the reception/party afterward – well, that’s another story. It won’t be formal, but, knowing the grooms, it will be a rollicking and merry celebration.

Ryan’s mother and stepfather and his father and stepmother will be coming up from Texas for the wedding, as they are as happy for their son as we are for ours. And all his siblings will be making the trip, too. Plus the grooms have a host of friends-made-into-family in Seattle, all of whom are wrapping their arms around them in a great big group hug.

That’s what dating, courtship, engagement and marriage should be – joyful, celebrated, the joining of two individuals into one new family.

I want that for my son and for all the sons and daughters who came before this time in history in America and for those yet to come.

Congratulations, Sam and Ryan. May you live long, happy and healthy lives together in the relationship you have built together and with all the blessings, benefits and joys that marriage grants you.

Voices correspondent Stefanie Pettit can be reached by e-mail at upwindsailor@comcast.net.