From the miracle department, please see Reed and his wife, Miranda, weaving through the crowd toward me after the second course. Congratulations, they say. See me hug them both, dumbfounded at what the human heart can do, how it can surprise and delight, how it can rejoin, regenerate, forgive, and connect across oceans of hurt, canyons of loneliness. Thank you for coming. It means so much to me.
Most weddings are a blending of families like my Texas Catholic clan and John’s Jewish family from the West Coast. Every dance floor at every wedding is a blur of bodies, some that belong to one side and some that belong to the other. As John’s family members scooped me into a chair and lifted me above their heads for the hora, I saw our reception from above. My parents and siblings gamely clapping along on one side, absorbing a custom that didn’t belong to them. Dr. Rosen and his wife amid a throng of his patients, linked arm in arm as they circled us, singing the words they knew by heart. Jeff’s brother, parents, and cousins waving their napkins in the air. As “Hava Nagila” played on, the chaotic, joyous scene below me became a collage of loving faces and arms holding me and John up.
In the weeks leading up to my wedding, I asked Dr. Rosen if we could share a dance during the wedding. I wanted to honor the work I’d done with him in group that made my life with John and our baby possible.
“I don’t want to step on your father’s toes.”
“Don’t worry, of course my father will get his own dance. Ours can be later. A traditional, mid-reception, therapist-patient waltz.”
“Talk about it in your groups.”
The more I discussed it, the more I wanted to dance with Dr. Rosen. I wanted to commemorate that I’d showed up for hundreds of therapy sessions and was no longer the isolated young woman with nothing but billable hours in her future. After all the crying, gnashing, rending, and screaming, it was now time to dance.
I wanted to dance.
Right after John and I got engaged, Clare asked me if I would have eventually ended up with John even if I hadn’t gone to group all these years. I said, I doubt it, but what I really mean to say was No fucking way.
Hear the opening bars of the iconic song from Fiddler on the Roof—the one the father sings about the swift passage of time and the blossoming of seedlings to sunflowers. See me leading Dr. Rosen to the dance floor from his seat next to his wife. See him twirl me left and then right, and then no more twirling because of the surging, first-trimester nausea. See the dance floor ringed with my group mates, past and present, who knew exactly what this meant to me and perhaps to Dr. Rosen. When the music ends, hear him give me one more mazel tov. Hear me say, Thank you for everything. I’ll see you Monday.
Because this story doesn’t end with a wedding.
The next day, John and I hugged our families good-bye and sent them to the airport. Snow flurries swirled all afternoon, and the late-November sun didn’t even pretend to shine. At home, John and I sank into bed, surrounded by presents and leftover cake. John’s heavy eyes succumbed to sleep, but I couldn’t settle. I picked buttercream roses off the cake and popped them into my mouth. I called Rory and then Patrice.
“Now what?” I asked them. “I feel weird, and yes, I know weird’s not a feeling.” I loved John and was happy to be married, but I also felt lonely and exhausted and anxious. Weird. Kind of like I wanted to bawl into my leftover wedding cake.
They both told me what I knew they would. “Bring it to group.”
Everyone was in their usual seats. My body still trembled with excess adrenaline from the weekend filled with family, friends, joy, and cake. I was still in shock that I was pregnant and dizzy in love with our little fetus.
Max opened the session by asking why the DJ made such a production out of my dance with Dr. Rosen. Patrice asked if my sister enjoyed the jaunt to Dr. Rosen’s office before the ceremony. Brad and Lorne teased Dr. Rosen about the cut of his suit, and Grandma Maggie praised Dr. Rosen’s wife’s merlot-colored gown.
And then, just like that, we moved on. Lorne reported on the latest with his ex-wife and the kids, and we debated whether Max should follow up on a lead for a new job. Dr. Rosen transferred his gaze from member to member around the circle while the rest of us did our best to offer our whole selves to one another. I felt my heart beating—its scored surface protecting the chambers, the ventricles, the atria, the valves, the aorta. I held my hands close to my chest and listened to the music of my group.
POSTSCRIPT
Ten Years Later
Before I sneak downstairs, I kiss my daughter’s head. She stirs and whispers, “Bye, Mama,” without opening her eyes. “See you tonight.” Her little brother in the room next door continues to sleep deeply even as I tussle his hair and kiss his cheek. They don’t expect to see me on Monday mornings. They know I have an early appointment with Dr. Rosen. They’re old enough to be curious. “Why do you go there?” “What do you do?” “Do you ever wish you could have Dr. Rosen all to yourself?” I don’t know what they picture when I tell them I sit in a circle with Dr. Rosen and my group mates—people they’ve known all their lives—and we talk and listen, and sometimes cry and yell. And no, I would never trade individual sessions for my
