Kal and I took advantage of one of Dot Org's optional holidays and went shopping.
A few days later when I filled out the timesheet for the midmonth pay period, I replaced "Optional Holiday" with "Genocide Day." Last week we had two anti-Columbus Day speakers neither of which wants the day called "Indigenous Peoples Day" either, so "Genocide Day" was it. I understand not exalting Columbus, but both sides of the debate are disingenuous to allege that the point of the day is to celebrate Columbus as a person. When a holiday is about an individual, it's on the birth date--King, Lincoln, Washington, Christ--or if a saint, the date they were martyred, e.g. Patrick (though not Valentine). But neither is the advent of mass European arrival and conquest and American genocide worth celebrating. Anyway, it's an optional and we took it off, and the above was one of all my reactions to their spiels that I did not tender to the speakers.
So. The point of the shopping was to find a wedding dress. Besides the everyday absence of Haitch, her removal to Canada, New York (as McCarthy puts it) meant that I got only one day of wedding shopping with her. With Kal, I get another, vicarious wedding.
Our first stop was a shop out west on Alameda whose address sounded like the one where Trey's dress came from. It was. At this shop, during Trey's final fitting, I was instructed how to operate the dress, how to fasten the train up after the ceremony and photographs so she could walk and dance during the reception. (I just looked for mention of Trey's wedding, which happened on my birthday in 2002. Nonesuch. In sum: she got hitched in Utah and the next day RDC and I went to Arches National Park.) This time, Kal and I were assigned an adviser whom neither of us warmed to. Me, because her gray eye makeup made her look like she had flu; Kal, not as given to snap judgments about appearance as I am, because she didn't take seriously Kal's guidelines on materials and cut suitable to a meadow wedding or on price. That was one of my jobs, to be a bulldog, and I excelled.
She tried on dresses and I took pictures. I had brought my own wedding earrings for her to wear to add to the look. We left that shop having added only one dress to a list of possibilities. Also, while Kal was in the restroom I looked at the accessories. A saleswoman passed me while I posed with a thing on my head. "That's a cake topper," she told me. "Right now it's a tiara," I told Ms. No Imagination. Plus when Kal came out I tossed her a box: "I think you need this." It was something I might need to put in CLH's stocking: a tattoo-covering kit.
Our next stop was lunch, and then another shop in a strip mall, unprepossessing in location and appearance. But then we entered, and the saleswomen were nice and responsive.
And we found the dress! Yes we did.
Which I cannot describe, it being Not My Secret, except that it is perfect. This is what I love about wedding dresses, that everyone's dress suits her perfectly. Perfect in fit and fabric, perfect in figure and flatteringness, perfect for setting and budget, and best of all not requiring the corsetty bra thing. The one thing I had to take Kal to task about is that, while ivory is a chancey color for a guest to wear to a wedding, I could wear my ivory reunion dress if she had chosen a white dress. So inconsiderate of her! And now I have to shop and possess yet another summer dress. Woe am I.
And then Kal became the saleswoman's and my own personal Pancake Rabbit. The clerk, Sherry, asked if Kal was considering a veil, and she said no, not particularly, and told her that I had woken with a vision of Kal in a crown of daisies. Sherry asked if she could try one anyway, and she was kind and not overly solicitous and had even found The Perfect Dress based on two Kal and I had found ourselves (it combines what she liked best about the other two), and what is wedding dress shopping without sampling all the ridiculous excess, so Kal said sure. Sherry draped a veil at the back of Kal's head, and when Kal and I looked at the effect we both cooed. "Damn, are well ever well-socialized," was my opinion there. After that the floodgates were opened and I made Kal my personal Oolong, trying tiaras and other sparkly headgear on her and if dorayaki or whatever else had come to hand there's no telling what I would have balanced on her patient noggin.
And then we cooked up the penultimate gigantor zucchini with pasta and watched "Mrs. Henderson Presents."