Hey, I'm Getting Married!

With the premarital instruction sorted out we concentrated on our wedding plans. The chapel was booked, the paperwork sorted out, the wittnesses for the notary registration of the marriage were to be my in-laws, the matron-of-honor a good friend and her husband was to be the best man, I selected three bridesmaids, two of them were my students and the third one was Adela Perez Restrepo, engaged to my brother and soon to travel to USA to marry him in Florida. The gown material was bought, the bouquet was ordered, yellow roses and queen-of-the valley orchids, the cake, the wedding invitations, all the small and big details that have to be taken care of when having a formal church wedding.

Soon after we had told his family about our wedding plans my future Mother-in-law paid me a visit. It was cordial yet strained. I spoke enough Spanish now to carry a conversation and we had been getting along quite well, but never got close. She wanted to know my reasons for marrying her son. (This scene is just like out of a tv soap opera or telenovela in Spanish)

Doña Cecilia: ” I just want to know what are your purposes, exactly for taking away my youngest son from the family”

Me: ”This is a love match, there are no ulterior motives”

She:” Are you sure my son is capable of supporting a family”

Me: ”Money is not the issue. I can support myself”.” If there's going to be children at a later date (no, I'm not pregnant) we'll both support them, of course.

She:” Are you planning to take my youngest son away from Colombia, drag him with you to the other end of the world where bears roam the streets?”

Me:”There are no bears in the cities, except at the zoo in Finland”

”And no, we're planning to give Colombia a try at least at the time being. We have not discussed moving abroad at all.”

After she left I had an uncomfortable feeling of not having convinced her at all.

The result of this visit was, however, that the Doña Cecilia engaged herself fully to planning the wedding. She took charge of the food and drink, mail wedding announcements and invitations to family members in Bogotá and USA. The Vegas had always been a small family, the paternal grandfather having moved to Bogotá from Bucaramanga and most of the relatives from father's side still living in Bogotá and Cundinamarca. My father-in-law was also born in Bogotá. His father had married a valluna, Carmen Rivera, and moved to Cali establishing a residence in one of the huge old houses of El Peñon, El Charco del Burro, when it was just family houses, before they built the hotels , high rises and restaurants there. He had one brother living in Cali known to be a staunch communist and two brothers in New York and the eldest son had also moved to USA with his Caucana wife and living in Chicago.

Doña Cecilia was the illegitimate daughter of Eva Brandt and (probably) some guy whose last name was Orejuela. She was, in turn, the illegitimate daughter of Josefina Brandt, daughter to a wealthy German landowner from Tuluá (Gustavo Alvarez Gardeazabal mentions him in his book ”Los Condores No Entierran Todos los Dias). The German had emigrated to America at the beginning of the 18^th century, escaping from the interminable wars in Europe and established his hacienda amids the lushest greenery of the valley of the Cauca River. He had two children, a son and a daughter but had not registered the marriage to the local criolla beauty and his children did not inherit him. The son had gone to seas and was not heard of ever again, the daughter, Josefina, had numerous children by different men and that's the reason why some of the Brandts are quite European -looking (Doña Cecilia had auburn hair, white complexion and hazel eyes, cousin Ana Cecilia is a dark blonde, Fabian had stunning blue eyes and dark complexion) and some are quite dark with black blood.

When the German died he was the sole owner of huge stretches of cultivated land that could not be claimed by anybody. Three Sundays in row a drummer parted from the cathedral steps on the main town scare beating his drum throug the streets of Tuluá shouting his message to anybody who thought himself to be entitled to Señor Brandt's lands and posessions please present themselves at the city hall, but nobody came and the fortune passed to be the property of city of Tuluá. Illegitimate daughters inherited nothing, even if they were recognized by their fathers and carried their last names.

(This is the family story told by Doña Cecilia herself, to me, a few years before she died. I have not been able to verify any parts of it, but the racial mix seems to be about right)

From Don Miguel's side it was all creole mixed with altiplano indigenous blood, perhaps a drop or two of Motilon Indian blood from the Santanderes. They were short and stocky, round-faced and beady-eyed men, hard workers and honest to a fault.

December 16^th was a Saturday and the first day of the Christmas break at work, we had a month off until mid-January and we had little money so we didn't plan any honeymoon, just a trip to a cold-climate hotel in Silvia over the weekend.

Two days before the wedding the phone rang and there was a female voice demanding to speak with Fabian. He never admitted that he might have known the identity of the caller. She begged and pleaded him not to marry the gringa; he would never be happy with her, he should marry a local girl instead. I'm sure there was much more that was said there that he decided not to tell me but I let it be.

The wedding went very well, first at the church where we arrived late because we were ”kidnapped” by the matron of honour and the best man and given a tour of the city while peole were waiting at the church. I thought it was quite silly but they said it was customary....we were supposed to be late. I had a white gown sown by a seamstress copied from a fashion magazine for brides, a diadem with flowers and a half-veil and a short train to my gown, Fabian had a rented smoking. Fabian had been at the church at the break of dawn and received the Communion, it was to be a mixed marriage with no eucaristia offered, We were wedded by the Canadian priest, nobody had any objections, we read our vows from a book and it all was filmed on super8 but whatever happened with that film I have no idea.

The wedding reception was at our school and we drank champagne, ate dinner and cake, danced and had a merry, joyful party with 6 waiters and about 200 invited guests, half of them from the English schools we worked at. I had invited all my students since I had nobody from my family there.

We spent a few days in Silvia at the tourist hotel there, I was longing for a change of temperature and scenery and it was a lovely weekend, we took long walks on narrow dirt roads, hiked a little cross country up the mountains and following the river with the iciest water, there were ancient eucalyptus trees that grew on its banks and the whole upcountry was permeated by the fragrance of eucalyptus, wild herbs and high-altitude grasses. We walked the dirt road at night, with the dim town light far below and the skies were studded with uncountable stars. I don't think I can walk those roads again, ever, without fear, like we did back then, when there were no guerrilla up those hills.

Back to town, we went right back to work. Up at the blushing dawn, picked up children in our van all around the northern barrios, near west and near south, kept them busy for a few hours and then took them home. We had lunch around 12:30, slept a siesta, took a shower and headed off to the Institute to teach English in the evenings.

I was in the middle of an early evening class when the secretary, Maria Cecilia, came to get me, my in-laws needed to see me. Don Miguel had a telegram in his hand; my dad had passed away. I mourned his passing with grief mixed with guilt: I had known when I left my family and Finland that my father was seriously ill and may not live long with the heart disease he had. He had had his first coronary attack years ago and there had been several others after that. He walked slowly, sat around a lot, his tempered had mellowed, but he hadn't quit smoking. He would sneak cigarettes when my Mum wasn't watching but he didn't drink much any longer.

I considered going to his funeral but decided against it. It was a long and expensive trip and we didn't have the money for it. I figured that my presence at his graveside would not bring any joy to him either, he was beyond that. My brother from USA was going with his young son; together with my two sisters they would have to be the support that my Mum needed at that time. I mourned him thousands of miles away, on the other side of the globe, in tropical Cali when he was lowered to his grave on a snowy March afternoon 1973. My mum had said that he died happy about me having settled down and gotten married; I guess he had worried about me being alone so far away. My husband-to-be had written him a letter asking for my hand; he had much appreciated that fine gesture, not that he could have done much about it even if he had objected.

That winter we also had to move away from the nice pool apartment. It was actually a good thing since the place was not that well suited for our purpose for it had no green grass or any yard at all, just huge rooms around a large pool and a second floor with three bedrooms in a row and a bathroom with a bathtub. We had sublet the second floor to Maria Cecilia, Maria Cristina Harris' cousin and the secretary at the language institute and her husband Freddy, who was much older, separated from the first wife and sported glasses and a smallish mustache. They moved out first and we started looking. We saw the ad for the Tequendama house in the newspaper, El Pais, it was a rental agency (inmobiliaria) that was managing it. The setup was perfect: in front of Tequendama park with all the green area you could wish for for small children to play in, quiet, residential neighbourhood and the property consisted of a rectangular one-storey house. The owner had later purchased the lot behind the house that gave out on the next street so it ran acoross the block, with entrance at Cra. 42 B and the grarage at 43. The back part consisted of a semi-open structure with a swimming pool, lawn, garage, two bedrooms on ground level and staircase to an open-air room like a roofed terrace and a bedroom and bathroom next to it. The door in the middle could be closed and thus the job part isolated from the home part. It had two separate telephone lines too, in one word it was PERFECT!

We signed the contract at he agency's office and that Tequendama house was going to be our home for the next ten yers, perhaps the happiest time in my life, in hindsight.