NO ONE THINKS ABOUT "SOMEDAY"
While driving along with my husband, I mentioned that the bridal shower invitation for my girlfriend's future daughter-in-law only listed the address for the party and not the place. My husband said that’s because you can find it on your Global Positioning System (GPS), which is all that matters to most people.
My argument was that someday the bride-to-be or someone in her circle might want to remember the name of the place where she had her bridal shower. My husband’s reply was simply that “no one thinks about ‘someday.’”
I always wondered what restaurant my in-laws celebrated at following their nuptials in New York. My mother-in-law described the ethnic establishment but could not recall its name. After her demise, I found her wedding announcement with other memorabilia, replete with the name of the Romanian restaurant. That was a little fun fact to cherish.
What also caught my attention was her bridal shower invitation. That, too, listed the location and is another fun fact to share.
When our daughter sent a family WhatsApp message noting it was four years since she and her husband got engaged, I immediately thought of that festive evening at the Hollywood Improv in Los Angeles. The entire scene of my husband and me, with the diamond ring in hand, flying to the west coast just in the nick of time, before the airport shut down due to a snowstorm, brought shivers.
That escapade took a back seat to the gathering at the Improv with family and friends. Thoughts of the next day had me smiling. We spent it with the happy couple at the botanical gardens of The Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens, known as The Huntington, in Pasadena. We also arranged to meet with another local cousin there, where I snapped a classic photo of the happy couple before gathering with our daughter’s maid of honor to make the first stop at trying on bridal gowns.
Too bad that more people don’t think about “someday” when they’re younger. It would relieve a lot of questions when they’re older and left wanting to imbibe cherished memories that made up their “life.”
I may not remember the address of my bridal shower, but the fun times were at the Coachman Inn, which, at that time, was located in Cranford, New Jersey, nearby Kenilworth, the town with the recent bridal shower with no name for the restaurant. Well, in the end, it wasn’t no-name exactly. Lo and behold, the restaurant had the address for its name! BoulevardFive72 sits located at 572 Boulevard, Kenilworth, NJ 07033.
While not everyone thinks about “someday,” I now ponder it a lot. Sitting on my computer cabinet is the 1937 Bible made in Austria, which my mother-in-law Hilda, followed by yours truly, plus our daughter-in-law Dena, and most recently our daughter Rina, carried on our wedding days in 1938, 1975, 2017, and 2019, respectively (and respectfully).
The Bible was important enough to make it into my in-law’s wedding announcement in the newspaper. I wonder how many generations of Hilda’s family will someday walk down the wedding aisle holding her white Bible. On that day, will they look inside to see the inscription to the bride and groom? It's there with the Temple seal from 1937.
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Below invitation and menu added on May 28, 2023
Invitation to Sharon’s bridal shower given by my paternal Aunt Fannie Mark
Menu from Sharon’s bridal shower April 27, 1975, at Coachman Inn in Cranford, New Jersey
The 18-part series about my family from Chudnov, Ukraine, will resume next week with parts 12 through 18 in consecutive weekly Tuesday posts, starting with Next Year in Jerusalem on July 5, 2022. Follow along to the concluding post in the series on August 16, 2022, entitled Where’s Chudnov?