Over the Threshold by Jennifer Lagier

      Rich Carstensen CC




Over the Threshold


It had been a traumatic four weeks—fiancée ill and flown home early from Vietnam, then a massive effort to organize our quickly planned wedding. When he saw the terrified expression on my face once dad walked me to the altar, he felt like leading me back up the church aisle, cancelling the ceremony. Somehow, we got through a convoluted Catholic service followed by a wild Italian reception with live music, a sit-down dinner, open bar, and nearly three hundred guests. The next morning, we packed a U-Haul trailer with gifts and our meager earthly possessions, hitched it to our Mustang, headed north on Interstate 5 to Seattle.

We arrived at 5 p.m., in the thick of rush hour traffic. Neither of us was used to driving on complex freeways. By the time he found an exit, then a hotel, I was shaking and in tears. We pulled into the underground garage where he parked, wrapped a huge chain around the trailer and a concrete pillar, secured it with a hardened steel padlock. Riding up on the elevator, we learned the annual Shriner’s convention was in full swing, hosted in the adjoining convention center. As we hauled our suitcases to the room, drunken men and half-clad women hung out of open doors, spilled into the hallway.

When the door closed behind us, I wept, terrified at being alone in a big city with a man who had been absent from my life for the entire past year, away from family, on my own for the very first time, terrified of what was to come. 

To distract and console me, he walked us to the Space Needle, took me up to the top, then back down to sit at the edge of a fountain. Lovers and children filled the plaza. I knew no one, had no idea how to find an apartment, set up a home. Overlooking Puget Sound and towering skyscrapers, without the support of family or friends, I knew I had made the biggest mistake in my life.

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Jennifer Lagier lives a block from the stage where Jimi Hendrix torched his guitar during the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival. She taught with California Poets in the Schools, edits the Monterey Review, helps publicize Monterey Bay Poetry Consortium reading series. Jennifer has published twenty-three books, most recently Weeping in the Promised Land (Kelsay Books), Postcards from Paradise (Blue Light Press), Illuminations (Kelsay Books).

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