This is a vanity posting.
Our Number Two daughter was to get married last weekend, on Saturday, May 1, down at the capitol. Our Number One daughter was scheduled to have her first baby in about an other month. Last Thursday morning I was quietly sitting in my office reading the mail, making phone calls, drinking coffee, yelling at my long suffering secretary and all the other stuff that comes with a small town law practice, when I got a call from Number One’s husband to say that My wife and I had become grandparents about an hour before. Number One had brought fourth a four and one half pound little girl some 45 days early. The child had been given a name I still can’t pronounce. Her parents claim that the name is Scots Gaelic for “pretty girl.” I have no idea, but I have decided to call her “Al.”
With that, I sort of zombie through the rest of the day and about 4:00 O’clock my wife and I pile in the car to truck the three hours to the capitol. There we find Number One, her husband and Al in a happy pile. Al is all pink, breathing just fine, yelling just fine and has a full complement of fingers, toes, ears, eyes and her bowels are working in top notch order. Question: will Number one be able to stand up at Number Two’s wedding. This is Thursday, the wedding is Saturday. Don’t know. Depends on what the doctors have to say. We leave the happy couple and offspring and make it across town to Number Two’s house.
Because Number One was going to be eight months or so pregnant for Number Two’s wedding my wife has made her gown – an exquisite Vogue number of gray satin with an Empire waist and a black lace over dress. At Number Two’s house the question of the moment is, even if Number One is out of the hospital will she be able to wear the dress. Who knows?
Friday morning we are back at the hospital where all is well, then off to the local deli to pick up the lunch for the wedding party. I am off to the airport, the so called Des Moines International Airport, to meet my mother and little sister who are flying in from Texas. They arrive not without the complications you would expect with an almost ninety year old woman of fixed opinions accompanied by a 60 year old man hater. By the time I get those two into the hotel and refreshed the rehearsal is over and the dinner, at a nice little chop house is well under way. Some one said that there is no difference between trying to get a base violin in a taxi and trying to load an elderly relative – if so I never want to have anything to do with a bull fiddle.
At the rehearsal dinner there are two tables. There is one table of the bride and groom’s friends and a second table of secondary players, parents, grand parents, various aunts. One table is full of bright conversation, gayity and laughter. The other table is made up of people yelling "what’ at each other. We are at the “what” table. Because my wife has picked up a bug of some sort she is off her feed. I am frazzled to the point that I order a beer which put the mother-in-law into a pursed lipped pout. Poor old father-in-law who went deaf in self defense ten years ago just sits there in a sort of daze. Number Two’s Beloved’s father is paying for this one, screw it. I have the filet and another beer.
Saturday morning breakfast with my mother and sister. Sister insists on telling my wife that no marriage ever came to any good, that she can simply not understand how my wife has put up with me for 40 years and that the key to a good marriage is to separate the guns and the ammunition. Then back to the hospital to see Number One and husband and Al. Everything is OK. Then to the deli again for more cold meat, cheese and vegies. At one O’clock Number One and Al come home. The dress still fits though it is a little loose in front. Off to the church. I meet the preacher for the first time – you stereotypical Lutheran preacher, big guy, greying at the edges, brown tweed jacket and, honest to God, Hush Puppies. From what I can gather his name is “Reverend Jeff.” I also meet the church wedding coordinator. He job seems to be to make sure the candles are lit and that nothing offensive happens. All I saw her do was sniff the groomsmen. Number Two’s Beloved has taken the groomsmen to a go-cart track to keep them together and sober. Apparently the groomsmen pass the wedding coordinator’s sniff test.
So we have a wedding. I take the bride in and stand there like an idiot until the preacher gives me the sign and Number Two gives me a shove. I sit down with the bride’s mother and keep an eye on Number One who is starting to sway like a tall pine in a high wind. We get the full load with four (four-count ‘em, four) Bible readings on various relevant topics, an homely, two hymns (the signature pieces for the concert band and the top choir at the fresh water college where Number Two and her Beloved met) that nobody but the bride and groom and a few members of the wedding party have ever heard before in their lives. The church brass choir toots and tootles away making up in volume for what it lacks in precision and we are out of there.
Then off to the reception, dinner for two-hundred-fifty, open bar and dance with band. It’s a wonderful evening despite the fact that the hotel has stocked only the best of booze – the bar Scotch is a single malt called Glen-you-will-never-be-able-to-afford-this-at-home. The crowd (which seems to really like Glen-you-will-never) is made up of Number Two’s fellow teachers who are determined to take advantage of a good thing, and lawyers from Number Two’s now husband’s firm, all of whom net at least as much as I gross, and who appear to expect the best. I am required to dance with my mother and with my sister, and with my mother-in-law (the very incarnation of the judgmental blue-nose) and with my new son-in-law’s mother as well as with Number Two and her mother. This effort is somewhat eased by a couple stiff shots of Glen-you will-never, neat. Come midnight the thing starts to break up and the young bucks announce that they are off to the Yupie bars to continue the evening. I am off to bed. Number One’s husband make a brief appearance. Number One is home with Al and now it is Husband’s turn to get off the nest.
Sunday morning comes way too soon. Breakfast with my mother and Sister. Mother has lost her cane. The hotel is now hosting a Mid-western little girls dance team contest. The place is elbows deep in Brittany Spears clones – many with valuable jewels in their navels and cryptic tattoos and extremely young looking mothers. Its hard to concentrate on breakfast. Get Mother and Sister off on the airport shuttle, not without the usual complications expected when putting a bull fiddle and a pit bull in a taxi. Sister has some parting shot to which, ever the gentleman, I make no counter battery fire.
Then to Number Two’s house for the gayla wedding brunch. We learn that the carter is lost and can’t find the house. We send the most expendable member of the family out to the curb to flag down the carter down. I do that. As we set up the fruit and the pastry and the egg dish and the hash browns and the sausage my wife’s family arrives – one aunt, her husband, one niece and her husband, followed by my wife’s parents and my father-in-law’s younger sister, a widow of 85 years, call Auntie. Auntie promptly crumbles on the front walk with a broken hip and demands to be taken to the North Kansas City Hospital. She has done this before so knows the drill. Within minutes we have the West Des Moines Fire Department Rescue Squad in the front yard and Auntie is off to the hospital (not North Kansas City) followed by her big brother and the incarnation of Judgmental Blue-nose . The rest of us go eat.
During the course of the morning Number One shows up, having left Husband on the nest, and eats enough for any three ordinary people. We learn that the deputy assistant bridesmaid had all of her libido needs for the next month or two taken care of at the hands of one of the groomsmen and that the south side windows in Number Two’s house need to be replaced. This carrying-on goes on until maybe 2:00 in the afternoon. We pick up the house, get the carter’s stuff boxed up and then off to Number One’s.
All is well at Number One’s but Number One and Husband need to go get some stuff since the whole thing has gotten ahead of their schedule. Will we watch Al for an hour or two? Of course we will. My wife holds the child, beaming; I take a nap, drooling. The new parents come back in about two hours with an actual car full of stuff. We help unload, sit around for a while drinking coffee (coffee is a delight for Number One since she has eschewed it for the last six months – because she is breast feeding she is still off booze) and we take our leave.
Then off to the hospital to check on Auntie. She indeed has a broken hip. It will be replaced on Monday but there is some concern about her heart so she will stay in the hospital for at least a week. She is on morphine and is pretty chipper, all things considered. Fortunately her brother and our girls are in town to keep track of her.
Back on the road. Home by 10:00. Cats are frantic for food (they are all barn cats, they’re OK). Monday morning back to work to find E-mail photos of Number One, Husband and Al. Auntie gets through her surgery OK and one of the nephews will come up for KC to take her to the North KC hospital for a month of therapy. All well. All happy.
It has been a Hell of a week, friends, but life is good.
Congratulations on all counts.