Last week was a whirlwind. I had planned a Tour of the South (and my past) so that the BF could meet more family (Extended Edition) and friends (College Edition) and so we could prepare more for the wedding.  It wasn’t until the trip was over that I realized how much of an undertaking it was, particularly for the BF, who had to deal with all of the following in a span of six days: Southern eccentricities (read: rampant racism represented most symbolically by the militia-guarded, size-of-Texas Confederate flag waving over Interstate 65); family politics (I mean both the political persuasions of family members and the tangled web of who is and is not speaking to each other today); cake and florist meetings; a gaggle of loud women who haven’t all been in the same room in quite awhile; and a premarital counseling session that I had described as a “getting-to-know-you” session with our minister but actually involved the question “Tell me about your childhood.”

The inauspicious start to our week involved one cancelled and one delayed flight to Atlanta.  Because it was “snowing” there.  Meaning ice flecks flew around the sky for an hour before evaporating.  But since the BF and I would rather sit and do nothing in a large space with magazines and a food court than in either of our apartments, we went ahead and caught a cab to LaGuardia.  Immediately upon arriving there and approaching the ticket counter, we found that our formerly delayed flight was now leaving on time and–surprise!–about to board.  Cut to us running Home Alone-style toward the gate.

We landed in Atlanta and picked up our snazzy Civic rental, then proceeded to put the first couple hundred of several hundred miles on it.  The Atlanta-to-Montgomery drive is a memorable one, filled with a Kia plant, a super speedway, and names like Tallassee (the BF asked if that was misspelled).  The next day was an even more scenic route, the Montgomery-Troy-Elba-Samson-DeFuniak Springs path to Florida’s Gulf Coast–a route filled with more cows than other cars.  I did get to introduce the BF to Southeastern celebrities/radio DJs Rick and Bubba and was further encouraged about our upcoming union when he pronounced them “funny.”

Then came the 30A-98 back-and-forth Civic-traversing over the next twenty-four hours.  We covered Sandestin’s Baytown Wharf for lunch, then hit Grayton Beach to meet the cake designer, who graciously provided dessert in the form of five heavenly cake tastings. This glory was quickly snatched away; the BF suffered through an hour-long conversation about flowers next, and even did a stand-up job of pretending to care!  Then we headed to our wedding venue.  As fate (whom I refer to as God) would have it, we arrived right before sunset and walked into a room bathed in golden light and overlooking the ocean.  And there was a bar. Basically my vision of heaven.  So we picked the menu with our wedding coordinator over a glass of wine and a beer, then we walked onto the beach and its cold March sand and looked around the scene that will be the site of our promises to love and honor each other as long as we both shall live.

Of course, people must consider certain information before making such promises. Like, for example, their childhoods.  So after some more meals with the family, we headed to Birmingham to meet with our minister.  Who is really my counselor from My Dark Age, a.k.a. the two-year period prior to my New York move and during my residency.  This man and Jesus walked with me through a rough period and saw me through to the other side.  He talked to the BF and me about our story, about our strengths and weaknesses, about our fit for each other.  He even got emotional as he observed what a different place I am in now than the one to which I was headed then.  And all I could think was thank you. Thank you, God of fate, for people who know me and still love me.  Thank you that the boat You’re in never capsizes in the storm.  Thank you for second chances and redemption and twists! For stories that read differently than my proposed outline.

At this point, the BF had provided an expenditure of emotional and physical energy that would have left the average man in a coma.  But he soldiered on to what might have been the scariest part of the trip: a reunion of my college girlfriends.  Talk about knowing and still loving me: these girls have seen me at my best (still trying to find an example…) and my worst (hungover Saturdays my entire junior year).  We have an unfair and uncalled for amount of background material on each other, and he sat patiently and pleasantly as we rehashed all of it.  And as many of their children zoomed around us, The Shining-like on their tricycles with their tiny Southern accents reaching our ears.  Fifteen years’ history and we can all be in the same room and fill it with laughter.  That’s saying something.

The rest of our week was spent in Atlanta with siblings and their crazy, fun, and potential (!!!) kids.  And Steve the dog, who didn’t bark as much at the BF this time but may have left a hole in the leg of his jeans.  And though we were more tired by the end of the trip than we were before we left, I was impressed by how much the BF and I encountered in our ever-overwhelming process of taking two separate lives and uniting them into one: three trips to Chick-Fil-A; multiple gas station stops and refuels (Diet Grapico, I will love and honor you forever); family ish (since when is this wedding about anyone but ME?  Oh, and him); and a small but steadfast band of people who know all the goods on me and are still here.  Not to mention a man who is brave enough to promise to walk through all this and more.  Becoming known is terrifying, fun, and full of surprises and blackmail-worthy information. But with the right person, it’s called marriage.  I’m so ready.