Dance Little Jean...

On Valentine's Day...

I played a wedding for the money
And I wished I could have told the bride and groom,
Just what I think of marriage and
What's in store after their honeymoon.

And I was grumbling to the dancers
About how men and women ought to live apart.
How a promise never made cannot be broken
And can never break a heart...

Then suddenly from out of nowhere,
A little girl came dancing cross the floor
And all her crinolines were billowing
Beneath the dress of calico that she wore.

Oh, what a joy fell on the honored guests
As each one of them was drawn into her dream.
And they laughed and danced and clapped their hands,
And hollered at her: dance Little Jean...

I've known Laney almost since the day she was born. Her Grandmother is my neighbor and her mother is a kid I've kept up with over the years. Laney was maybe a month old when she came to see Ann and her Aunt Bethani play basketball for the first time. Grandma spent a lot of time tending Laney since her Mama wasn't married when she was born and struggled to make ends meet working a low-wage job with strange hours. Lots of women with tiny children don't have husbands. I know, I was one of them.

When Grandma asked me to photograph her daughter's wedding, I didn't think much about it. The affair was scheduled for Saturday, Valentine's Day, a holiday that means nothing to me. I always have work on Saturdays, whether it be mending computers or shooting some event for someone.

Even for out here, the wedding seemed to be held way out in the sticks. I guided my new car over two-tracks with one eye on the scribbled directions Grandma had given me as the early afternoon threatened rain. After so many miles this way and so many that, I arrived at a country shack, newly painted and christened by a sign out front as the CountrySide Baptist Church.

The obligatory half hour early, I tried to ignore the drafts inside the church/house as I photographed Great-Grandma preparing punch and checking every few minutes on the heart-shaped chocolate cake covered with red icing strawberries that she had no doubt spent many hours crafting. I checked my watch as I eased through the tiny rooms of the church, testing the light where I could. The illumination was awful, warring with walls of pea green as it struggled from feeble standing lamps and ceiling fan fixtures that were hung so low, the top of my own head was in danger.

I fiddled with the controls on my new camera, hoping for the best but not anticipating much in the way of great photos and then went out to smoke. To escape the cold Oklahoma winter wind, I huddled behind an outbuilding and was startled when I flushed this really tall fellow in a shirt and tie from the confines of a garage that was falling in on itself.

My first thought was that this guy looked like Lurch. My second was that he looked plumb damned scared to death. My third thought was that my little neighbor Laney looked like a small clone of this overgrown ploughboy, her tiny female females much more suited to their genetics.

I'm the photographer, I announced, sticking out the hand that wasn't holding my cigarette.

I'm getting married today, responded Lurch.

Hmmmm.....

Do you have an idea of what pictures you'll be wanting?

Whatever we do will have to wait until after the ceremony, he said.

Okay? I asked.

'Cause I can't see her.

Can't see who?

Kristen. Laney's mom. I can't see her before the wedding.

I looked more closely at this monstrosity and then asked him to take me inside the house, of course from a point that Kristen couldn't see him, and show me people that he wanted pictures of. Since there were maybe 20 people in attendance by this time, I didn't think it would be hard.

The church was a bit warmer as Lurch (he confided that his name was actually Chad) crept inside, trying to be incognito. I was surveying the area, ensuring that Kristen was not present
before calling him in, when a tiny whirling dervish swarmed our knees.

DADDY! At least that's what I thought Laney said as she launched herself at Chad. He scooped her up, all wriggling 18 months of her, decked to the nine's in a lacy red dress with huge matching bow on the back, white tights and perfectly tiny black patent leather shoes. I should have been taking pictures but I just stood there, marveling at the way the towering man cradled that little child, the perfect mirror image of him. My heart strings tugged as Grandma came out of the cramped dressing room and beamed at Daddy and his little girl.

Laney's wearing her Mama's dress, made for her when she was one.

Damn, I thought. This is not a shotgun wedding. They planned all this...

Well, my cynical heart just melted
'Cause I figured what this get together meant,
How it ended years of tears
And sad confusion that little girl had spent...

Grandma motioned me into the sanctuary of the dressing room, where Kristen and her Maid of Honor were engaged in the time-honored ritual of "getting ready," hedged closely by spare pews jammed into the room. My perception of Kristen was that of a plain girl, more than a little too heavy, and not very bright. But I found she looked gorgeous, makeup perfectly applied until she appeared radiant, a strangely wise smile lurking around her eyes.

But, perched upon her Grandma's lap, Laney was already getting tired and wanting her Daddy. The female relatives packed into the room tried to pacify her, waggling their fingers and calling to her as her Mama packed herself into her bright red wedding dress and prepared for me to photograph her.

I know Laney. And she knows me. So, with my camera swinging from my neck, I asked...

Do you want me to sing for you?

I realize now that the song was bubbling near my heart. My attention on no one but Laney, I coughed to clear my 48 year-old pipes and serenaded this little girl, her blonde curls instantly still at the curiousity of my country twang, perfectly pitched if I do say so myself...

Dance, Little Jean, this day is for you.
Two people you love stood up to say 'I do.'
Dance, Little Jean, a prayer that you had,
Is answered today: your Mama's marrying your Dad.

The moment was only about me and my tiny neighbor, Laney, who listened quite raptly until my song was done. I didn't notice that everyone in the room was fixed on us. I didn't notice til I had voiced the last strains of the song that tears were leaking down Grandma's face and Mama was sobbing, her makeup become a morass.

I didn't intend to do that, it just happened. I didn't intend to cry when the preacher pronounced Chad and Kristen as Man and Wife and Laney rushed out to grab her parent's hands. And I intended to leave just as soon as the punchline but I didn't...

And they told the band to pack it up,
About the time the couple cut the cake.
But we played as long as they stayed...

For love and laughs and Little Jeannie's sake....

Of course it was during that time, having shot 175 pictures, that I finally got THE ONE that will serve as this couple's wedding photograph for the next 50 or so years. Although my deal was to only transfer the photos I took to a cd for printing at Wal-Mart, I couldn't help but print it myself, on fine Kodak professional paper that they would only get at a studio. And when Grandma came by to pay me today, I brushed her off. Let this one, just once, be on me.

Dance, Little Jean, this day is for you.
Two people you love stood up to say 'I do.'
Dance, Little Jean, a prayer that you had,
Is answered today: your Mama's marrying your Dad.

Click to download Dance Little Jean.