To Blave
"Why is there a crowd getting out of your mother's car?" Emily asks. I turn and see the aforementioned crowd, my mother, father, sister-in-law, three nieces and younger brother. Given that my father and she were just invited two days ago, I am impressed that she rallied the troop quite so efficiently. 
She walks up to me and immediately says, "I asked your father what your haircut looks like and he said he didn't know. But you look like John Denver!" And my soul hardens a little and I contemplate if she can be uninvited at this late juncture, her smile so broad as she scores a point against me. I do not agree with her then, but search the internet later and have to begrudgingly admit to a passing resemblance, making me no fonder of this haircut. I got it only because the prep school insisted time and again that my hair was too long. I made the rookie mistake of giving my hair stylist two pictures, one of the compromise haircut I wanted and one that I absolutely did not despite what others had said. She purposely chose the latter and this unfortunate fact did not make itself clear until after I showered, at which point I had no recourse but to pout. It is difficult for me not merely because I had so come to love my former haircut (the shoulder length semi-professional cut, not the extra long hippy hair) that I set that as the baseline for my self-image. That was how I am supposed to look and now this stranger looks out at me from mirrors. A stranger with bangs and too much forehead.
My nieces dart around in the assembled crowd, not clear on the solemnity of the occasion. This is only good and proper, as Emily and I were a bit fuzzy on that as well. I know that the intent was for this to be small and light, giving our real wedding over to a spectacle of distant relatives and tiered cakes. Still, I suppose all family cannot be abandon, for what is a major life change without the loving mockery of people who have changed your diapers? 
Emily and I arrived to the appointed gazebo ten minutes before my parents, with many of the guests in tow and the rest meeting us. Dezi and Conor had been there at least half an hour, though we had neglected to inform the former that this was not a formal occasion and he was dressed far too nicely. Despite the insisted upon informality of the occasion, Emily and I intended to get reasonably dressed up. It was our day, after all. I wore a red dress shirt and black jeans, along with a velvet jacket. Emily nixed my Russian Count jacket, with good reason. It gave me the shoulders of a gothic linebacker. Emily wore jeans as well, along with a black, v-neck shirt. Emily had intended to wear a skirt, then a dress, then another skirt with a different blouse, then an entirely different outfit. Comfort won the day, as it must. We will truss her up for the real wedding. 
Initially, I worried that this occasion might constitute a party and thus would be subject to the long forgotten curse that kills our events through lack of attendance. Dave and Nikki cancelled owing to illness, Melissa and Stevehen had combination work-family engagements, and two of Emily's friends, Jerame and Ann, couldn't make it once we changed the location on account of rain. Yet at the appointed hour, half a dozen friends poured through the doors of our tiny apartment, made tinier owning to the majority of our possession occupying cardboard boxes in preparation for moving. 
I feel an amused sort of detachment to the proceeding, the sensation of "what a curious and pretty world this is." I watch and live each moment -- first and third person, neither omniscient. Even standing on the brick of the pier -- the setting we chose over the gazebo owing to the photogenic backdrop - I remained uncertain what this was supposed to mean for us. A ring and ceremony did not mean that I loved Emily any more or less, it just meant that I was willing to go to these steps and farther to keep her my constant companion in some pastoral prison. I know every morning that I wake up that she is the one I want in my bed come nightfall, filling as many hours as I can manage with the blue of her eyes and the scent of her golden noodle hair. I know that we fit together in our quiet moments and in public wonderfully enough that strangers watch us banter as though we are a play. I know that she suggested the seeds of this nuptial plan and I thought it marvelous and right and continued to think so through every step that brought me here, minor quibbling over the phraseology of the ceremony aside. She is my sherpa to every adventure and I, her goat. (The love sickness may have afflicted my ability to form cogent analogies.)
| 
| 
| 
| 
| 
| 
| 
| 
| 
| 
rate
email
print
link to this page
