Paper Crane Wishes

Matching Making On Aisle One (then)

Matching Making On Aisle One

(then)

I don't know what it was about that day that made my mother decide Cameron was the perfect match. We had grown up together, gone to the same church. We were familiar because that's how everyone here is, but we had never been friends. I don't think I had ever even had a non-required conversation with him.

I like to think that it was something she had been planning, put careful thought into. Everyone in my family had the help of other matchmaking family members, not as a required thing, but it was something that we did. And they were always happy. So there had to be some sort of method to be used.

My youngest brother likes to say Mom just picked him at random, a boy my age that just happened to be standing in the right place at the right time. Or the wrong place with the way things turned out for us. I try not to listen because a nine year old boy can't really no much about this sort of thing.

But that doesn't matter. What matters is that she did decide before she walked in the door on a Monday night with a bag of groceries and a smile on her face.

"Olivia, I've found your match," she said. I swear she was smiling more than a twelve-year-old watching her best friend attempt to talk to her crush.

I think she expected me to jump and down squealing with joy. But I wasn't that twelve-year-old best friend. I was a sixteen year old girl trying to survive the hottest summer I could remember. It didn't matter that I had been inventing my love story since I was three, the detail that never changed being my mother's involvement. Or that sixteen is suppose to be when everything changes.

I was just hoping for there to be popsicles in the bag. Banana flavored.

"Well don't you want to know who it is?" She shifted the bag as her smile dropped. I could see the worry creeping into her eyes.

"Sure. Here let me get that." I volunteered while swinging my legs off the couch. She followed me as I carried the heavy bag that wasn't the least bit cold. No hope for that banana popsicle.

"Cameron Headrick."

Cameron Headrick. I tossed the name over in my head trying to match it to a face. When you only know a person through familiarity, not because you're close, it can still be hard to remember them no matter how few people there were to remember.

Slowly it came together. He was the Cameron with the brown hair that could never be described as messy. A nice guy, but not the over friendly nice guy that seemed to flirt with everyone. Freckles. I remembered the freckles. They were light and sprinkled all over his face.

He was the only other kid in school with as many freckles as me.

Much to my mother's disappointment my response was, “you forgot the popsicles.”

Her excited tween girl smile dropped, replaced by her disappointed mother look. The crossed arms, narrowed eyes, raised eyebrows, and thin mouth that will send every child cowering. “Priorities, Olivia. At your age popsicles should not be the most important things.”

“Mommy!” Natalie, my youngest sister who was four at the time, ran up and had her arms wrapped arount my mother's legs before her shrill voice finished the word. One braid was half undone with the other close behind. Sticky juice ran down her fingers and arms matching the smudge around her mouth.

“What have you been eating?” Mom cooed at her.

“Blake let me have the last popsicle.”

I knew there had been one this morning. I even hid it. It had taken a good few minutes to shove wedge it behind the bag of frozen frozen asparagus that no one would ever eat. How she found it was beyond me.

“And why did he do that?”

“Because he and Bethy are getting married.” So young and she already understood what the mention of marriage did to our house. She was probably already planning her own love story, wondering how long it would be before she met the one. It was like an infection we all caught early on and spent our lives cattering to. Or at least until we had that ring.

We dreamed of it more than any other little girls did. We knew how to plan real weddings, not just those fantasy ones.

Mom reached down and pulled Natalie up onto her hip. She wrapped her arms around the little body of her youngest daughter and held her tight. There was a flash in her eyes that made me wonder if she ever worried about what would happen when she had married us all off. This meant the two oldest had been a success. Now there were only three left.

“When did he propose?” She directed the question to me, not to the one who obviously knew all about this newsflash.

“I don't know. He and Bethany were watching Nat. I didn't know he had. I was busy trying to find the popsicles.”

Nat leaned forward reaching her arm out until her hand wiped across my face leaving behind a smudge of sticky artificially flavored banna popsicle juice. “Have some,” she said with a giggle.

I gave my sister my best impression of Mom's dissapointed look but couldn't help cracking a smile.

Mom didn't find it funny. She turned with a huff and made her way through the house in search of my nineteen year old brother – who had dissappointed us all by not getting engaged before high school graduation – and his girlfriend of two years that my mother had not picked out for him. The match had been made by my twenty year old sister so it wasn't a huge break in the rules, just a little change that no one complained about. Mostly because Mom had been having such a hard time picking someone who was just right for her son.

I think she secretly hated Bethany just because she hadn't been Mother Approved first.

Once ever room in the house had been pronounced clear the little search party headed to the backyard where the happy couple had spread a blanket under the biggest shade tree. A picnic basket sat unopened and forgotten at the edge of the blanket. They were alternating between kissing and admiring the shiny new ring on her finger.

After a moment Mom cleared her throat. Another mother thing I failed at immitating. “Isn't it beautiful?” Bethany asked, more like squealed, as she stretched her hand out for us to see.

Mom took one look at the diamond and turned back to me. “You have a date on Saturday. We'll get you a new outfit tomorrow.” Followed with a look that said I'd better not mess this up and then returned to couple. Her first question was if they had set a date.