Reading: A wedding program was about the extent of it

Moving: Danced, extremely energetically, to one song, and less so to some others; no calisthenics

Listening: I don't even remember the song they first danced to. What a shmuck.

Watching: TJZ got married. I watched her, I watched my nieces. Oh yeah, there were some leaves too.

7 October 2000: Little Muffin Gets Hitched.

Friday: Prologue

After nigh-interminable travel, RDC and I arrived in Connecticut. Some frightening things happened and some not-frightening things.

  • We decided to park in the economy instead of the long-term lot, because the scant dollars more per day seemed a reasonable price to pay to be free of the frustration of waiting for a shuttle that never shows up.
  • We watched "Goodfellas" last Saturday and didn't like it. Robert DeNiro and Joe Pseci played the same characters they did in "Casino," which I didn't like much either (but RDC did). The main character looked like a cousin of mine whose face is pitted with what I always thought was acne scarring but turns out to be more drug abuse. (I realized this cause-and-effect when I met the street-addict (adopted) daughter of a friend of ours, whose teenage pictures show clear skin.) It took me a while, but eventually I placed the lead actor as the young Archibald "Moonlight" Graham in "Field of Dreams." That's what the in-flight film was, and I was glad to see I was wrong. I liked Moonlight Graham old and young; Ray Liotta played Shoeless Joe, just as snarly in "Field of Dreams" as "Goodfellas." That much I realized by glancing at the screen; mostly I read The Virgin in the Garden. "Field of Dreams" is a feel-good movie, too much so, it is played too much over the top, plus it's about baseball.
  • The last two times we've gone home we've flown into Logan and rented through Dollar. Avis has enough staff that we waited about ten seconds and were on our way three minutes later, or maybe a little longer since I couldn't bear my hiking boots and socks a moment longer.
  • The traffic was the first frightening part. Except I didn't drive, so maybe I'm not allowed to have found it frightening.
  • The really scary thing happened when we paused at a rest stop in Fairfield to pee and find a snack. The car parking next to us disgorged two women who asked if we were from New Jersey. I was shocked, to say nothing of insulted. They asked, come to find out, because our car had Jersey plates. Anyone who is so gratified to see a possible compatriot that they exclaim over you as nearby to New Jersey as Connecticut cannot get out of the state much. I shall never rent a car in New York again if that's the risk I run.
  • Seeing RDC's grandfather on the way to dinner was more depressing than last time. I think in July I didn't go to the facility, which would make it almost 11 months since I've been in it. It was too late for him to go out, and so we left. Leaving, he forgot he'd already said goodbye to me and wanted to say goodbye again. But when we arrived he knew RDC immediately; in November he thought RDC was his son not his grandson.
  • At the restaurant I partook liberally of garlic since I won't see Granny, nor she smell me, for two more weeks. Then I realized that I'm still as Irish as ever and equally unable to digest it, and here I was going to a wedding the next day.

---

Saturday: Logue

in his family's driveway I got dressed without accepting offers of scarves and jackets and so on from RDC's aunt. I never know if it's ruder of me to refuse such offers or to accept them with no intention of wearing the things, so I go with the easier option.

TJZ isn't the sort to overlook such details, but the church's own directions to itself were off: at the fourth traffic light and such-and-such landmark, we were to turn right, but that landmark (which I knew well) didn't happen until the sixth light. Had the church not updated its direction after the installation of two traffic lights? Perhaps not, but as we turned the corner (at the sixth), RDC remarked that there was no way PLT would make the wedding. He did, though, perhaps because he and his family came from a different direction--or perhaps STL drove.

When we spotted the church and RDC turned into the driveway, only then did we realize we were going the wrong way. A U of driveway-parking-driveway bounded the church. Arrows pointed the way, but only painted on the asphalt, not on signs. The absence of signs weakened RDC's theory of its being (with its one-way driveway) a drive-thru church. If there isn't drive-thru communion yet, one day there will be.

Now came the time to wait. We hung out in the parking lot, meeting and chatting with other guests, but underneath it all, waiting. And watching. The day turned out just beautifully. Friday had been gray and unpleasant and rainy; Saturday dawned sunny and brightly, slightly chilly, exactly right for an October wedding.

A minivan drove into the parking lot (from the correct side) and from the middle seat someone waved. SEM. I jumped up and down. Following the van was a car, and then I ran. Moments later I was in a huggalicious SEM-Nisou sandwich. Nisou smelled just the same as always and I inhaled deeply, saying she smelled good, and SEM inhaled deeply, saying we both smelled good--so I guess he likes garlic too, and he's as Irish as I am.

Nisou I had not seen since her wedding in 1996, nor MCB; HEBD and her husband and our beautiful child since November of last year, and SEM in December; Maman (JUMB), Papa (AMB), ALB (soeur), and her husband (bel frere, if a mother-in-law is belle mere?) we saw in July. There was much rejoicing. Maman, Nisou, SEM, HEBD, ZBD, JPD, MCB, LJH, AMB

In the church, we kept walking up and up the apse, led by the Pied Piper of AMB, and all the way up to the fifth pew. "We can't sit here, can we? Isn't this too close?" I asked. "Yes, yes, do!" said someone two rows back. We did serve to fill in the gap between TJZ's family (first three rows) and everyone else. No usher guided us.

And there we were. It was inexpressibly wonderful to be among all my family. Aside from the wedding itself, there was only one more thing to wish for: the meeting of the Zs, whom all of us consider cousins. The Berkeley contingent did arrive, sound and unlost--and from the north, whose directions were possibly not as faulty as those for westbound arrivals. The two little girls eyed each other and, at first, played shy.

Somewhere in here SEM exclaimed, "Here's MLS!" and of course, here he was. (In truth I have forgotten, in the at least ten years since I last saw him, what his middle name is--though I bet my L is correct--so I'll just call him Steinie.) TJZ's good friend and high school boyfriend, Steinie went to UMass and visited us often at UConn. I don't know how he knew Soulmate, but he introduced him to TJZ and, as the day evinced, that was that.

An empty pew separated us from TJZ's family, and Nisou and I enjoyed ourselves seeing the resemblance between TJZ and her nieces. We also met Steinie's sister, mother, and girlfriend, sitting behind us. Despite all this, we managed to shut up when two of TJZ's nephews seated their grandmother.

All attention swiveled to the door. I was glad to look away from the altar. This was the first time I had been in a church since seeing "Dogma," and I kept seeing the Buddy Christ instead of the crucifix. I grew up with austere Congregationalist crosses myself, and I prefer the simple look. Later in the weekend we talked about how different religions have you focus on positive possibilities and have you visualize optimistic outcomes, in contrast to versions of Christianity with their focus on sin and repentance.

At the end of their walk, TJZ's father kissed his youngest daughter and admonished Soulmate fakely-sternly (or so it looked to me) before taking his seat. Probably something about being good to his baby.

I was relieved to see there would be no mass. I had expected the full calisthenic ceremony. At RRP's wedding, guests behind us actually poked us in the backs when we failed to kneel on command. This time, with a Jewish family behind me and Buddhists and heathens and nonCatholic Christians surrounding me, I did not fear such harassment, but it was possible. Without a full mass, it was unlikely.

Three memorable bits during the ceremony:

  • When the priest said something about marriage not always being blissful, a woman among TJZ's family failed to restrain a lisa-like hoot of laughter. The whole church giggled and she flamed red and her husband turned to her in embarrassment. And if marriage is not always blissful and takes a lot of work, how would a priest know?
  • Most of the dual-officiant ceremony was fine. The exception was when the priest listed the TJZ's and Soulmate's respective duties in marriage. Soulmate was to be a good husband and father, and while I don't see parenthood as necessary in marriage I'm not surprised a Catholic priest would. TJZ's duties, which the priest mentioned first, were to be a good wife and mother and keep a good home, yes I quote, a duty not listed among Soulmate's. It didn't take me until Soulmate's list to express my surprise. The snap of my mandible dropping against my sternum was audible to all around me. I felt a wave of amusement emanating from my family.
  • Oh, and then there was a lot about a third member in the marriage, Jesus. The priest made it sound like a menage ˆ trois.

As the church emptied through the receiving line afterward, we inched through the vestibule and had plenty of time to see that in addition to the fonts of holy water by the front and side doors, there was another vessel that looked like a water cooler. I figured it was a cooler placed there instead of a plumbed water fountain that a more contemporary building would have. A little basin suspended under the tap made me wonder, however, and ALB & I nipped over to check. Yes indeed, the basin would catch any drops of holy water that shouldn't be spilled on the floor, for so it was labeled. Just as in RRP's church, I was thirsty; just as in RRP's church, I knew better. But I can't fathom why anyone would need five gallons of holy water at a time.

ZBD on her turtle? dinosaur?ZLT on her horseAfter braving the reception line and congratulating our favorite t-muffin, we played in the playground of a neighboring school, watching the Zs get acquainted. They might have eyed each other a little warily at first but then, on a little seat under a complex plastic jungle gym, STL asked them each a couple of ice-breaking questions and from then on it was all over. They were inseparable.

EJB hoped his wedding would fall during peak foliage, but so many leaves were already turning in southwestern Connecticut this weekend that two weeks from now in northeastern Connecticut will be well past peak. So many trees were changing that the reception's setting was even lovelier than otherwise.

After looking for placecards, we found ourselves right next to the kids' table and a door to the lovely stone patio. It turned out we should have put the Zs at the end of the rectangle near the kids' table and left the empty seat at the end adjoining an adults' table, but ZLT sat down first and ZBD wouldn't be parted from her, and besides we didn't yet know that that round table in the corner was for kids nor the other repercussions of the seating arrangements, so down we sat. Eventually. Up and down and up and outside for drinks, photographs, investigating the fountains (a stone fox dipped his toes in one; I have to find out if it was Beatrix Potter's Mr. Todd).

 

TJZ and Soulmate

The first of my brilliant copy&paste jobs, which is how the stone wall is misaligned. I'd rather the misaligned wall and repeating trees on the far left than the honkin' big SUV that chose that moment to zoom by.

Mr. Todd and TJZ

Mr. Todd seems to find something other than the bride interesting. Foxes are often rude. I like his top hat though.

*almost* everyone

Standing are Nisou, SEM, HEBD, JPD, me, MCB, RDC, and M; squatting are STL, JUMB, and AMBF. AMB is taking the picture, and I believe PLT is rounding up the girls. Then we gave up on bringing the Mohammeds to the mountain and instead brought the mountain to the gazebo.

everyone but AMB and oh maybe the bride and groom

The reason some folks are looking askance to their right is that Nisou and SEM look kind of odd here, no? Somehow not everyone fit into the viewfinder, and at this point my husband was taking a picture of AMB taking a picture, and when RDC did indeed scamper in behind the gazebo, AMB had flipped my camera to vertical and got only the center folks. So I did some judicious cutting and pasting, entirely seamlessly (koff koff).

Standing are Nisou, SEM, MCB, RDC, JPD, HEBD holding ZBD, STL holding ZLT, PLT; sitting in front are JUMB, me, AMBF and her husband M, whose middle name I must learn before I go apeshit (and he'd better have one).

Brainteaser: who, vitally important to the festivities at hand, is missing from this photograph?

 

Did I mention that the weather was perfect? Too chilly for the teal linen sheath, but perfect for the floaty lavender floral, by itself in the sun or with the lavender, thin cashmere cardigan CLH gave me for Christmas when the breeze blew a sun across the sun. I worried much too much about my appearance, as my insecure vanity is wont to dictate. (I was glad I had my eyebrows waxed through. The attendant petted my face. I got to lie down for 20 minutes in the middle of the day and listen to newage weather music and have my face pet. And ripped at, but still.)

My insecure vanity did not need the stroking someone was soon to offer it (and offer to the rest of me, incarnate, as well). When we sat down to our appetizers, we were joined. Nisou's parents, sister, and brother-in-law were seated elsewhere, but all of us, knowing each other for years and outrageously intimately, spouses less known and still loved, plus two delightful girls we all adore and dote upon, were all at one table. Then Bunny claimed the twelfth seat.

Bunny is perhaps the least common but most telling of the male nicknames available to the folks whose lives The Official Preppy Handbook (tragically out of print) satirizes. It is also the name of the mascot of the clique of classics majors in Donna Tartt's The Secret History: a none-too-bright blunderbuss. He stood when I got up, and when Nisou got up. I did notice, however, that this courtesy was not extended to the one woman who shared a surname with another man at the table or to the men at the table, nor applied to the table as a whole when food was served. I did not pick up my fork until everyone (at my table) was served; Bunny (name changed the better to describe the guilty) dove in immediately. I recognize the standing-up gesture as a courtesy, but I prefer that if it's extended it be extended to everyone, like opening doors.

We introduced ourselves when he arrived with his placecard. As TJZ later made her circuit of the tables, she exclaimed that he was to have sat at the opposite end, next to a table of people he did know. I did initially feel sorry for him, seated where he knew no one, at a table where everyone knew everyone else, but the sympathetic kindness didn't last. Three of the four women had surnames common to no man at the table, and so his hopes were formed, plus though we all wear rings on our left ring fingers, none of those rings is a diamond and so obviously they could not indicate marriage (just ask my mother); later he asked one of the men confidentially who were the single women, and so his hopes were dashed. I picked up all kinds of unpleasant signals from him, in addition to the chauvinistic, selective "courtesy." MCB wanted to stick a fork into his own neck in order to escape the man and RDC indicated the three forks at each setting and advised him to select the correct one.

I thought guiltily of the group dynamic factor: were we so obsessed with each other, as some would claim, that we couldn't enjoy anyone else? But then I realized he was just tedious and false and chauvinistic, full stop, and I wouldn't've liked him if I had been on my own or in a group of several other, but fun, strangers.

a tiger and a lioncake hugEnough of Bunny. The Zs were much more fun. Under the table lived a lion and a tiger who kept eating our feet off. Then an elephant joined them (me). From under the table, I said, "buon giorno, principessa" to Nisou, just in case she recognized the scene from "Life is Beautiful." Then a wombat (SEM) joined us. After that it was crowded, and when I next caught up with the girls, they were under an outside table being witches. By this point they were calling each other "tousin," since both have trouble with the initial "k" sound. They held hands and were altogether so giddy with excitement about the cake that I kind of got a picture of the two of them with their arms about each other, wide-eyed, instead of the actual cutting.

ZBD's red sparkly dress is the result of her telling her mother that she wanted a red sparkly dress for TJZ's wedding and HEBD finding exactly that. And it wasn't quite red but a little darker, the better to go with HEBD's own outfit. The bob is also of ZBD's own devising: she told her mother she wanted her hair cut to right there, and that's what HEBD did. HEBD's own hair is the sort belonging to that woman in O. Henry's "Gift of the Magi," but she's not the sort to force that on her child. I saw but tragically do not own a photo of ZBD on her first day in preschool, when she had braided pigtails and looked enchanting and beautiful in a totally different way. I still will brook no argument that she is the most beautiful, gentle, scampering little child ever in the history of the world or any of its possible futures. Her tousin's grin is nevertheless delightful as well. I'll confess to some cutting and pasting in the under-the-table zoo shot as well. ZLT's arm does indeed grow from her shoulder and not from her kidney.

---

When music started, I was delighted, ready to dance with my nieces the way my mother danced with me--holding me on one hip and extending my arm with her other hand. (I loved that.) ZBD was the closer as well as the less shy, so I scooped her up and made up of an open space in front of the fireplace (rather than the dance floor, which was far from mama). Still inseparable from her tousin, ZLT wanted to dance too. PLT brought her to me, but I couldn't dance with both: I needed to do dips! and spins! For those I needed two arms. (Besides, who am I kidding? Those kids weighed 40 pounds apiece. One was plenty.) So the four of us danced, and ALB joined us, and maman and papa B, and another three-year-old named McKenna with her mother who wanted to meet these other three-year-olds having such a good time.

It was late afternoon by now and soon RDC came to tell me he was leaving, off to host EJB's stag. To take his leave of TJZ and Soulmate, he'd have to brave the dance floor. This I had to see, and besides he'd promised me ten seconds of gimpy-kneed slow-dance, so I abandoned the ring-around-the-rosey. I don't remember what that song was (thoughI did get my ten seconds), but the next was "We Are Family," and TJZ had all her sisters (five altogether). That was fun. I claimed a dance with Steinie, who can dance, unlike me and even more unlike most men.

And then! Was it? Could it be? Oh yes! My song! I seized Nisou's hands. This song brings out my inner gay, and if MCB could claim to be a lesbian trapped in a man's body--both he and SEM have recently fallen in love with homosexual women, saying preferring women gives them more in common with their partners--then I can be a gay man. Why? Because tonight for the very first time, just about half past ten, for the first time in history, it's going to start raining men!

God bless Mother Nature, she's a single woman too
She took off to heaven and she did what she had to do
She taught every angel to rearrange the sky
So that each and every woman could find her perfect guy

Nisou had never heard the song before and was mightily amused--or perhaps she found my utter inability to dance or my gleeful if not glee-club-worthy singing amusing--and we danced and spun and swung and I was ready to rip off the roof and stay in bed as the Weather Girls advise, but then it was over. Somehow directly after that I was compelled to tell the Jessie story about Shel Silverstein, and if no one else knew the pancake poem, plenty knew other Silverstein to quote to me. I love my friends.

---

MCB Nisou SEMInstead of rice or bells, there were wee champagne bottles full of bubble-blow on the tables. A bottle of red, a bottle of white, whatever kind of mood you're in tonight, including a dash of bubbly bubbles. Which reminds me, I was surprised that at TJZ's very own wedding, not a note of Billy Joel was played.

Which reminds me again--at TJZ's house on New Year's Eve 1989 (for 1990), Steinie teased TJZ for buying Billy Joel's Greatest Hits Vols. I and II when it contained only two (or maybe one?) songs that she didn't already have. His toast was in the same vein. As their common friend and the way they met, he spoke at the wedding and gave a good toast. Her father's made TJZ cry, but Steinie's made us laugh. He described Soulmate as charming and devoted and chivalrous and many other nice things, and then said, looking right at our table, "...and TJZ knew she deserved all that..."

And before I forget, those cufflinks on SEM's shirt--he didn't have any shirts with French cuffs when we met him, but TJZ and I gave him those cuffs for freshling Christmas anyway. I was so surprised when I saw them, and touched, even though I know he wore them for her not me. I forgot to ask if he ever figured out what the figures on them mean (we selected them only because they had characters from some Asian language or other worked on them in silver). And Nisou went to China this summer (instead of home for her family house's 30th anniversary, which I guess is a good excuse), which is where the fabulous green dress and black shawl came from.

And before I forget again, the dot on Nisou's forehead is because she Bindi'd herself. It was on the back of her placecard and she decided it would look well on her head instead. Between the lack of dot on her card (which indicated her flavor of entrée) and the fact that we were all shifting all over the table to get away from Bunny, we had the waiters mightily confused.

It was so nice for TJZ to stage this reunion. The last time we were all together was Nisou's wedding, and because it was her wedding there was less of her to go around, and RDC and I were poor so only I flew home, and there were reuniting-with-HEBD mindless bliss and PLT-badness, and ZLT and ZBD were present only in utero and therefore were less entertaining. We missed SPG, but otherwise it was a thoroughly good time.

And this is my new favoritest photograph in the whole wide wild world:

LJH DEDB SEM

---

At the after-party chez the newlyweds, TJZ and Soulmate could spend more time with their closest friends than they could have done at the reception. Nisou scarpered to meet an old friend for supper (which relieved me about the propriety of RDC's ditching for the stag, despite TJZ's earlier reassurances not to worry about it), and we hung out in her basement and she wriggled her toes in blissful freedom from heels.

Disproving the worrisome group-dynamic theory, I got acquainted with Steinie's girlfriend, TJZ's sole attendant (sensibly chosen from among her nearby friends rather than from among the far-flung ones or from among her six siblings), and some of her students.

Steinie's girlfriend Sue was just super. I asked how they met--a sidewalk swing dance--and she asked how we all knew each other. I squealed and yelped and claimed the question as mine, because a) she did ask me directly and b) I am Poppin' Fresh Memory. I pointed and commenced.

"MCB, SEM, PLT, HEBD, and Nisou all went to high school together, in the town where UConn is. Then they all started at UConn. In the first few days of freshling year, my neighbor said she met these great people and I should too, and so I met SEM and promptly gave birth to a huge crush..." I was sitting on the floor leaning on SEM's knobby knees while he sat in a chair next to HEBD and smiled back at him fondly and he winked at me. "And at first I didn't know about HEBD--"

"who I was going out with," clarified SEM--

"which meant that Nisou, when she met me, the crusher of her best friend who was going out with her other best friend, didn't like me." JUMB didn't know that morsel of my past with her daughter, so I hurriedly added, "which is why what Nisou said to me at the end of first semester remains one of my favorite things she's ever said to me: 'I didn't like you at first, but I like you now.'

"Meanwhile, again at the beginning of freshling year, I was wandering through the halls of my six-storey dorm, and through an open doorway saw a 'Breakfast Club' poster on the wall. There was no one in the room but I knew I needed to know this person, so it was a good thing the person on the phone at the end of the hall turned out to be TJZ.

"Also meanwhile, PLT went to look up someone he went to summer camp with, and when he found her room, his high school classmate Nisou lived next door and the camper's roommate promptly developed a crush on him."

"This sounds really incestuous," Sue commented perceptively, and HEBD snorted and SEM said I hadn't even started yet and I failed to blurt, then or ever, how many of TJZ's college friends there present had continued TJZ's high school habit of sucking face with Steinie (the listener's, Sue's, boyfriend, keep up with me here).

"And through SEM I met MCB, though I forget how, and then one night the two of them came over and brought PLT but when I opened the door it wasn't to the boys but to mountain gorillas who reduced my room to shreds. It was when I was imploring them please to leave my roommate's underwear alone [a detail I made up, but which was probably true if forgotten] that my neighbor's boyfriend knocked on the door. When I opened it, silhouetted against the bright hallway was a 6'6", very broad, very dark, bald-headed, extremely irritated black man, who said," I paused--

"'Could you please keep it down in here?" intoned SEM in a stentorian voice.

"--and you have never seen mountain gorillas become human so fast in your life," I summed up.

"If you've seen them do so at all," put in JUMB, to whom this story as well was new.

"And second semester HEBD came to UConn and we might not have been friends then but we were later, and junior year in her photography class she met JPD. Also in junior year Nisou went to France and met SPG a year later. PLT went to Brandeis for grad school and met STL there, and I went back to UConn for grad school and met RDC (who'd been there all along), and that's how we all got together."

At that point I demanded that everyone be proud of me for being concise and going into only one tiny little extra story about gorillas. What I really meant was that I was impressed with my own self for not divulging the really incestuous bits. And when people praised my unprecedented brevity, what they really meant was "I can't believe she didn't say all the things I really didn't want her to say about all the incestuous bits."

And then it was close on 8:00 and time to collect Nisou from her rendez-vous with her old friend, which she had really enjoyed, and leave the bridal couple to their own devices. So we braved the gauntlet of the living room where Bunny was narrating a televised baseball game to members of the audience who possibly couldn't understand the action for themselves or were in need of his incisive commentary or blasting volume or both, and we left.

That was the wedding, but Saturday wasn't over yet.

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