Gabby_ A Story of Courage and Hope - Alison Hanson [62]
“Let me get this straight,” I said to her. “You want me to go to marriage counseling with a guy who has never had a relationship with a woman in his life?”
“Well, it’s only ten classes,” she said.
“Ten classes? In Washington? How am I going to get from Houston to Washington for ten classes?”
“Maybe we can do it by video conference,” Gabby said.
We met with the chaplain, a very nice man. I thought I could talk him into giving us the abbreviated version of marital counseling, but he wouldn’t go for it. He also wanted to see us in person. We had to back out.
Gabby still liked the idea of counseling, though, so she turned to her rabbi at Congregation Chaverim, the Reform temple in Tucson where she is a member. Rabbi Stephanie Aaron has an interesting backstory. She was born Catholic, converted to Judaism after marrying a Jewish man, later divorced him, became a rabbi, then married a different Jewish man. Gabby really liked her, and I thought maybe a rabbi with this background would understand where I was coming from as a Catholic marrying a Jew. From her own life, Rabbi Aaron knew about divorce and finding love on a second try. I also appreciated that she didn’t ask us to commit to ten sessions. We ended up meeting with her a couple of times, and it went fine. She agreed to conduct our wedding ceremony.
Just before our ceremony, we signed our katubah, which in essence is a Jewish marriage contract. Gabby had asked me to write the vows for the document, and this is what I’d come up with: “We pledge to love, respect, and support each other. We shall endeavor to be understanding, and will work hard to build a strong and loving family, a family that fills a home (or three) with laughter. We will help each other with our wishes, dreams and goals.
“We will support each other as we navigate this world, and will try our best to leave it a better place than we found it, a place that is more good than bad, more light than dark. As friends, we promise to be honest, forgiving, and devoted to each other. We will share whatever wisdom we may possess, and will grow together on this incredible journey of marriage and life.”
After the katubah signing, it was time for the wedding ceremony.
We were married on a cool desert evening under the traditional chuppah, a canopy that in Judaism symbolizes the home we’d create and the children we might bring into our lives together. When the ceremony ended, we kissed and then walked back down the aisle as the mariachi band played the Hebrew folk song “Hava Nagila.”
My military comrades had arranged a traditional “saber arch,” in which officers in formal dress honor a bride and groom by holding up swords or sabers. They did a good job with it, positioning their swords with tips nearly touching and blades up, as Gabby and I walked hand-in-hand underneath. They were joined by Laurier/Buster, the ring boy, who held a toy sword. It was something of a surreal scene—a Jewish wedding with military touches and a mariachi band providing the soundtrack.
Marc Winkelman, a Texas businessman and our good friend, was one of the four people we honored as a chuppah pole-holder during the ceremony. As he mingled afterward, Marc couldn’t stop smiling, and he was struck by the fact that the other guests—astronauts, politicians, Navy guys, my old buddies from New Jersey, Gabby’s friends from Tucson—all had similar expressions on their faces. “Everyone was smiling from ear to ear,” Marc later told us. “There was just so much love and affection in the air.”
The reception was held in the courtyard of the hacienda, and the evening’s emcee was Robert Reich, a very funny friend of ours best known as President Clinton’s secretary of labor. Bob and Gabby had met years earlier when she spent time at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.
When Bob raised his glass for a toast, he alluded to the pace of our crazy lives. Gabby, a member of the House Armed Services and Foreign Affairs committees, returned from a visit to Iraq just days before the wedding. In a week’s time, she’d gone from power