Reading: The same. Don't expect anything new for the next few days.

Learning: That any wedding ceremony that requires the bride and groom to separate and sit down is silly. That, properly primed, my husband will dance to the Village People.

Listening: Wedding DJs.

Viewing: A lovely wedding dress, lovely flowers, RRP's two infant nieces...

Moving: Danced for four hours.

13 November 1999: Old Lyme to Deep River to Cheshire

Saturday morning we woke to an extremely warm room. All the heat from the house had wafted to the second floor, plus I had cranked the heat before we went to bed(s). I could smell the heat coming on but by then we were together in one twin bed anyway. Besides the minimal heat rising and the heat to the bedroom itself, there was also sun through the skylights. I lay there and wrote for a while as RDC slept, and when RDC stirred he said he'd been sleeping since I was writing. Now it was time to get up.

Quick like freezing bunny rabbits we got ready. RDC showered as I stripped the beds and examined all the photographs on the walls I might not have seen before, then I showered and threw our linens into a wash as he dressed. Swilling down tea, tying a perfect tie knot, and messing with my hair lasted through the spin cycle and we set off for BJWL's house as soon as I threw the wash into the dryer.

It's not that much farther by car than through the woods and soon enough I turned onto my mother's road. RDC looked back to Boston Post, perhaps with trepidation. "I thought it was farther." Nope.

My mother was okay. She asked the same questions over and over, and since for some time I was in the bathroom drying my hair and pretending that I knew how to apply makeup, RDC had to bear up all by himself. When I emerged, mascara'd and eyelined, blow-dried and ponytailed and topsytailed and braided and chignoned in my usual dress-up style, I noticed that my mother sported a New Look. She got wire-rimmed glasses! They're her colors! They're a good shape! They don't have that stupid swoop on the side! Apparently BDL insisted on helping her choose new frames. But she doesn't like having a smaller corrected field of vision. It's not that much smaller. And I went from big owl glasses to oval spectacles and haven't died yet, so I bet she'll make the transition okay. It's a huge improvement in her appearance--more important than sight, right?

One of the questions RDC had to deal with was about his job. All men should be the sole or primary breadwinners for their households, and if the woman has a job, it should be subordinate, in nursing, clerking, or teaching, and her income should considered pin money. Not that I knew this when I was a child, but gradually I understood that my father's income was for the mortgage, utilities, his meal and drink tabs, his car and clothes, and extravagant gifts for us, while my mother's measly income was for groceries (for the three of us, since he ate breakfast and lunch and usually supper and of course drinks out) and all our other maintenance--clothing, school supplies, birthday presents (hence why I owned so few books as a child). Therefore RDC has always slacked, since he's just in school while I labor away. Teaching courses has never been work, since it's just part of his slacking away. While I was attempting to mascara my eyelashes but not my cheeks I heard her exclaim, "It's full-time? That's good!" so I had to call in the general direction of the kitchen that I had indeed told her about his job when he got it back in January. "But I didn't know it was full-time!" This indicates to me that she didn't know that he's worked at least part-time and usually full-time throughout his graduate career. Not that she'll remember next time.

I brought photographs from our Pacific Northwest trip and gave BJWL her copies of dinner at Buca di Beppo. I pointed out in the whale watch pictures that those lumps along the shoreline are seals, not rocks, though you pro'ly might not otherwise guess so. I also claimed, according to her, that there was a bald eagle at the top of a particular tree. RDC wouldn't've taken a picture of regular trees on a cloudy day without a good reason, like an eagle, would he? Our camera doesn't telephoto enough to capture it, is all. "If you say so." Like I habitually lie to her. Piss me off.

I looked for the creamer. I didn't see it, but that hutch is so packed full of everything, including jelly jars with cartoon characters printed on them to make into juice glasses from our childhood, that no one could find anything. Except BJWL. She did find her Francoma leaf dishes and put them out. We shared a funny! Hooray!

A typical BJWL-ism: LOLHS advertised a show called "The Warrens: Ghosthunters" with some inflated ticket price to fund the alcohol-free graduation party. Since it would fund a no-alcohol event, BJWL and BDL decided to go. And they thought it was a play, which means that either LOLHS didn't describe it well or my mother is just vague as hell. Which she is. Well anyway, the show was canceled. My mother described driving up to the high school, seeing closed doors and milling people, and asking someone what was going on. Upon being told it was canceled, BJWL said she joked, "Are you kidding me?" Now, I've known my mother for almost 32 years now and I can tell you that whoever she asked probably felt like this woman was holding them accountable for a) knowing the status of the show, b) not calling her at home to spare her the inconvenience of driving less than two miles, c) not refunding my mother's ticket price out of their own, perfect stranger's pocket. I figure one of two things happened. One: Since the Warrens tour and touring lectures do get canceled at the last minute without warning (while school plays seldom do), that's what happened here. Or two: Some fundies heard that the Warrens do believe that ghosts exist and got them drummed off the stage for promoting the occult. I firmly hope it was the former. If there are any fundies wandering around Old Lyme, I want them to be no more whacked than my mother. That old bat who lives on Sill Lane and donates Phyllis Schlafly's books (Child Abuse in the Classroom, about how confusing it is to be taught evolution when you know creationism is Right) to Phoebe doesn't even count. RDC and I had heard of the Warrens because they came to UConn every fall. I never saw them because I never wanted to see them, but I don't recall ever thinking they were a play. We explained that they're husband and wife who give lectures with photographic and aural evidence supporting their belief in ghosts. And we're not insane, because the three other UConn people at our table at the reception also remembered them. So there.

Granny was still asleep, but my mother had dragged my box of books out of the small garret off my (grandfather's) room. I went through them and plucked out some, but Claudia was not among them. Nor were my yearbooks. My yearbooks are somewhere, I know, probably in the long garret in the front of the house. (It's a cape, so there's the long one and two short ones under the gables in back, broken up by our alcoves and the upstairs now-bathroom.) I couldn't go into the long one, though, because my mother had the insulation adjusted Just So (which has been the reason, aside from my grandfather's residency, I haven't been permitted access for the past several years). My Weebles are up there, I hope, and my yearbooks; she wouldn't toss those without my say-so. I pro'ly lost Claudia on my own and hope I can find her through Bibliofind.

RDC's and my long-standing agreement has been that he shall never been obliged to eat in my mother's house. This day blew that. Given Granny's cold, BJWL thought it would be better if we ate at home. And she made a cake for RDC's birthday (and sent a Snoopy birthday card the week before, which cracked me up). The cake was faintly frightening: it was leaking. She had used some kind of butter substitute in the frosting and the water had separated. Hydrogenated oil, now without the hydro.

As RDC and BDL finished scrambling eggs, my mother and I went upstairs to wake Granny. She didn't look too much different than she did in June, but she sounded different. Dreadful. She had a bad cold. As she struggled to sit up, I began to rub her back, gently, barely touching it. She patted me: "Mmm, that feels good." Granny had to take her noon pill and we processed into the bathroom for a glass of water. A glass glass of water. Which she knocked into the basin. Still the protective grandmother, she didn't want me to clean it up, but her own method for determining whether that glistening thing was a drop of water or a shard of glass was to press her figure upon it. So. I suggested we go downstairs. My mother wiped out the basin with a tissue, not a rag or sponge. I was proud of her for resisting a parsimonious urge that could deliver a sliver to the next user of a sponge.

Lunch. Cantaloupe, fatty ham, cranberry muffins from a mix, scrambled eggs. It was noon and I hadn't eaten yet except for tea and stolen swig of my grandmother's Tropicana. I had a sliver of ham, several slices of melon, and two muffins, and eschewed the eggs, as ever. It is a well-known fact, as any six-year-old older sister could tell you, that eggs are poison particularly when scrambled.

And BJWL might have told BDL that I'm not what you'd call sympathetic about the following issue, but I suppose he knows now if he didn't before. He said they'd been talking about Pan Am 103 the other day, and did I know that when he was the manager of Mitchell's [a grocery store], Scott Corey had worked for him? No, I didn't know that, I replied, and turned pointedly back to my plate. "Sure was a nice kid," BDL continued. "You must have been friends with him?" Obviously BJWL has told him nothing about my high school experience. Was I friends with anyone?

"No, I wasn't friends with Scott. At all. He was a jock and in the crowd of those whose favorite sport, more than soccer because it was year-round, was to make my life a living hell. My condolences to his family, but I didn't shed a tear." Damn.

I am not charitable here, I am not kind. I will not feign grief for a person who enjoyed what misery he could cause me. I stood at his grave years later and touched the stone, trying to make peace with my high school experience, but I still did not cry. And I won't canonize him just because he's dead, either, no matter how he died. I would have talked to him if he'd come to the 10-year reunion, just as I tried to talk to everyone from my class. Civility and making peace are both very important to me; so is releasing bitterness about crap that happened over 13 years ago. Lying about how I felt about someone just because some fuckwad terrorist blew him and 260 other people out of the sky and claiming a relationship that never existed so I can ride on the coattails of tragedy are not important to me. I might have couched the same sentiments more diplomatically if I had a tactful bone in my body. Or if I were in the habit of lying to her, as she seems to believe already.

And can I just mention that the Dickens village is set up in the living room and looking tacky as hell? Not that it has a hope of looking otherwise, of course. It lacked nearly a fortnight to Thanksgiving, I neglected to point out to her, and several more weeks to Christmas. Propping these figurines among cotton balls on a rickety table that looks like it was stolen from a church parish hall and covered with a tattered bedsheet probably doesn't set off the village as well as it could, either. A while ago I considered buying her some bits for Christmas. RDC was strongly opposed on the grounds she could just as easily have a Harriet Beecher Stowe Village with a Ye Old Friendly Whipping Post and charmingly cozy slave quarters and let's not forget a nice block for selling human flesh upon. I was taking leave of my principles to consider it. I'll have to find something else. I said such a thing (Dickens, not Stowe) ought to have a workhouse and a chimney with a dead kid in it and a bleak house in probate and Satis House. When I saw Satis House in one of the catalogs I perused for my sister's Catalog o' Tackiness, I was surprised: certainly this couldn't romanticize Dickens. But it did. I forgot Disnification. The copy claimed that the iron gate and broken shutters "hint at Miss Havisham's reclusive personality." Okay, maybe it does romanticize. Bowdlerize, more like. And Quasimodo escapes happily ever after with Esmerelda. Right.

So anyway we escaped. We found the church without a problem, it being part of my former turf. I backed into a spot and there we were, before 1:30 even. We sat for a moment with me considering what to put in my hateful purse and figuring it was too cold to scamper about barefoot beforehand. The woman in the next car and I gazed at each other, lost in our respective thoughts, until I blieve she recognized me first and then how her expression changed sparked my own recognition: "SWBW!" I yelled and leapt out. "Sooby!" yelled RDC (which a representation of her usual nickname) and leapt out.

Sooby and her husband Bernie had come to Denver from New Mexico last year for a Jimmy Buffet concert but before that we hadn't seen them since we got married. There was much rejoicing. We saw Skip arrive with MPR riding nervously shotgun; they disappeared quickly. EJB and Tracy arrived close behind. SWBW had the perfect fall wedding dress. A warm crimson with streaks of willow leaves in gold. I wore my purple jersey because it's flattering, comfy, and a great color, but it's sleeveless and jersey and I like florals at weddings. I guess I've been mostly to summer weddings. And I shall never understand wearing black to a daytime wedding. Sitting on the hood of the car, I pulled on thigh highs and slid my feet into pumps, and then I just had to share this someone who would Understand. "Sooby, my mother just let me into the garret so I could get some of my books out. Look what I got!" I flourished Flowers in the Attic. She squealed. Good woman. Occasionally I meet someone (like HAO) who didn't devour V.C. Andrews as a pubescent. What did they do with themselves?

I remembered that I forgot tissues, but Sooby had plenty. What a wimp I am. I didn't remember to ask for any, though, until MPR's mother was seated, whereupon I realized I was in immediate danger. "Sooby, can I have those tissues now? Because I'm going to lose it as soon as I hear the processional."

And I did. MPR's sister and JHRDM stepped down the aisle, JHRDM tall and lovely and tousle-curled as ever, and past them in the doorway RRP's sister, and then RRP and her father arm in arm. My face split and nearly ached with love and happiness escaping through smiles and tears. I grinned more, thinking of a favorite line from one of RRP's and my favorite movies: "Laughter through tears is my favorite emotion!" RRP caught my eye and her smile widened and mine leaked, and as RDC leaned in front of me with EJB's camera I caught Sooby's leaky eye as well.

This is why I don't wear makeup. I had applied eyeliner and mascara at my mother's, though not lipstick until we parked since it lasts even less long than eye makeup does even when I am not bawling. And I do bawl at the slightest provocation. Kevin catches the ball in "Parenthood," Farmer Hoggett dances in "Babe," Louise's mother says "More" in Jacob Have I Loved, Mandy gets a teddy bear for Christmas. And when anyone, including someone I've never met before like RDC's high school friend's bride, walks down the aisle, I cry.

The priest was kind of loopy. "What man has joined no man may put asunder." This must have been this priest's loophole for Catholic divorces under a female judge. I'm used to the bride and groom messing up, like Diana reciting Charles's extra names, Philip Arthur and George, in the wrong order. Me giggling. MPR getting all choked up as he recited his vows. Not the officiant. Also he used white instead of red wine, which symbol or not looks weird. The plasma, not the blood, of Christ. He waited and waited for the Transubstantiation to be complete--actually while a cousin played a lovely flute solo overhead--and it was a good thing it wasn't the "Jeopardy" music.

Continuing the theme of being ignorant of others' religions, I was desperate for a glug of water beforehand and scampered to the front of the church wondering if there might be a basement with a fountain or even just a sink. Nonesuch, but as I passed from the apse to the vestibule, I saw a small brass bowl fixed into a doorway. An ashtray? I wondered. Or a spittoon, showing my western influence. Then I saw someone dip his fingers to cross himself before he entered. Hmm. I was thirsty....No, I didn't drink the holy water. I sat in my pew and sucked a lifesaver.

There was an hour between wedding and reception for photographs on the beach so after some photos outside, six of us headed for Oliver's, three of the five in RDC's college gang and their SOs (the other two and their SOs being the bridal couple or in the bridal party). Here are Skip and JHRDM. She really is just as lovely as that in person. And RDC and me. See how great I look in RDC's leather jacket, and how jealous he is of it?

and

I haven't been to Oliver's since RDC's and my first date or whatever that was. I guess it was a date, since we're married now. It wasn't a date at the time. It still has open barrels of unshelled peanuts all through the bar. I saw no one I knew. That was good. I've lost the immediate surety I have navigating neighboring towns, though. As we continued south on 153, I didn't turn left automatically onto 166. Nor unautomatically either. I would have turned around but for having two cars following, and whatever, we just came out farther west on Boston Post. There was an antiques store that made me spew: "Rue 153." Let's not try to be classy and use the French for "street" if the street name is a number, shall we?

At the reception, we danced and drank. I was as desperate for iced water as anyone else was for beer and once upon leaving the dance floor (because a country song had started), I propelled myself along the straightest trajectory to the bar, over instead of around furniture. Also I was well-behaved and asked RRP to introduce me to her Naunie, since we both love our grandmothers so much and RRP met mine years ago.

This was our table. I swirled the people I don't know. Seated, left to right, someone who lived in Grange (their UConn dorm), me, Sooby, Tracy, and the best man's wife. Standing, the Grange woman's husband, RDC, Bernie, and EJB.

For once I remembered to bring my own deodorant this trip, but since I couldn't find it I had to use my mother's. She uses this bizarre cream Arrid makes. Whatever, as long as it worked. It didn't, and wasn't an antiperspirant either. Dancing, RDC told me that I smelled like my mother. Ick. I shall post no pictures of us dancing. I plead the fifth.

Well. Maybe one.

EJB asked RDC to be his best man next year; EJB was RDC's. So that was another thing to celebrate. Did I mention it was RDC's birthday as well? A salient fact I continually forgot in the days preceding, such that when my mother mentioned it my best response was "Shit!"

RDC, Skip, and EJB all love RRP so very very much. And I love that strap thingie that she held her train up with. Hoisting it over the shoulder, whatever. What I can't figure out is how there are two left hands on RRP's arm. Unless one is RDC's. The one with the ring is certainly Skip and I guess you just can't see RDC's ring. You can't see his eyes, either: I think he's looking up at the camera and you can see only scalera under his brows. Eeek.

And this is detined to be a life-long favorite:

I love this one too. Skip is actually very normal looking (see above).

Afterward we were all to go to EJB's for the evening, the same three couples who went to Oliver's. Not Skip and JHRDM; they were going home to continue the impregnation process, and not RRP and MPR, beginning the impregnation process. But SWBW & Bernie and RDC & I would join EJB and Tracy at their new house.

Their new house. Good grief. Walking in, RDC said, "This can't be your house; this is a parents' house!" And it was. Criminy. There was hot-tubbing and chestnut-roasting and the telling of stories and then bed.