The Wedding or the Check?

I'm a thrifty person. After I graduated from college my career aspirations included joining a commune, doing street theatre and living on hand-outs, traveling the world, and going to grad school. I never fantasized about marrying a doctor or a lawyer even when I discovered I could not afford grad school, but still, being broke in L.A. and driving an ancient car got old after a decade.

After I became an attorney's wife some of my favorite clothes still came from thrift stores. Which isn't to say I didn't enjoy the money. A house. Private school for the daughters. Travel. Lots of theatre tickets. But even then I didn't want all the trappings--diamonds and Rolex's and luxury cars just seemed like a waste to me. Weddings were one of the items I put in the category of unnecessary extravagance. Whenever we took our daughters to a big wedding, I told them that they, too, could have a fancy wedding. Or they could have a check. Eventually, those discussions were abbreviated to simply, "The wedding or the check, girls." I'm pretty sure they knew I wanted them to choose the check--or at least a very modest celebration matched with a modestly-sized check.

C. and her fiancé hovered between running off to Vegas and having a more traditional wedding. She was calm and happy when I spoke to her yesterday after their shopping spree at thrift shops and bargain stores to hunt down the necessary pieces and parts to make centerpieces. She was glad they were having a wedding, she said. She learned a lot--and one of the things she learned is that there are a lot of people she likes and wants to party with. Me, too. I'm thrilled there'll be a wedding. It takes a big event to gather our far-flung family together. Of course, not absolutely everyone we love will be able to make it, but big milestones are meant to be shared, I think. To be witnessed. To be celebrated. And the words "celebrate" and "alone" seem like they wouldn't want to be at the same party.

Me, I'm ready to party. I look forward to meeting more of N.'s family. To traveling to a beautiful place I haven't been. To seeing a bunch of my ex in-laws. And I want to draw the circle tighter around my daughters and my son, the people they love, and me and the man who loves me. This will require some effort and concentration, since we currently inhabit four different states. That geography might shift a bit in the coming year. But no matter how that shakes out, I'm aiming for a state of togetherness on a more regular basis. It will be easy to think about that this coming week as we revel in a state of fuzzy family love.

Holes. Islands. Families.

There's a hole in my kitchen ceiling. 
A hole in the ozone layer. 
One of my favorite short stories by Alice Munro is called "Deep-Holes". 


The kitchen ceiling hole was opened up on purpose by the emergency services and restoration guys who are dealing with the aftermath of my washing machine disaster. So it's a good hole. A hole that will let the inside of my ceiling dry out and prevent the growth of mold in secret dark places. The hole in the ozone layer is not so good. Skin cancer, cataracts, the depletion of plankton are consequences of the increase in UV radiation now that the buffer of the ozone layer is thinning. 


In Alice Munro's story a geologist takes his family on a picnic to celebrate a career accomplishment. Sally, the wife, has to chase after their young sons through the pocked terrain toting a baby and a diaper bag, "She was nearly crying with exhaustion and alarm and some familiar sort of seeping rage."  Of course one of the boys falls down a hole. He breaks both his legs, but survives only to disappear years later after six months at college. A metaphorical hole. When the young man finally writes to his parents, he doesn't apologize or ask about his brother or his sister. “It seems so ridiculous to me,” he said, “that a person should be expected to lock themselves into a suit of clothes. I mean, like the suit of clothes of an engineer or doctor or geologist, and then the skin grows over it, over the clothes, I mean, and that person can’t ever get them off." A decade or so later--after the father's death--the prodigal son resurfaces. He's called Jonah (a whale's belly is a sort of  hole) now, and lives in a condemned building with a community of others who survive by begging and scavenging. Jonah agrees to see his mother, but there is no tidy resolution, and it seems unlikely, by the story's end, that Sally will see her son again. "And it was possible, too, that age could become her ally, turning her into somebody she didn’t know yet. She has seen that look of old people, now and then—clear-sighted but content, on islands of their own making."


Holes. Islands. Families.  
My phone rang all morning. First the man who loves me, then my mother, then my daughter
M. A few freeway exits away, Midwest, East Coast. Like all we wanted was to close the gaps between us. The guys called about the restoration of my ceiling, too. They'll come to close up the hole later this week. M. and I called each other back and forth a half-dozen times. Gaps in  phone coverage, and then a flat tire for her (another hole,) and what should she do about that? But the main topic of conversation was how to get my mother to my daughter C's wedding. Four generations of us at one table before there's a permanent hole in that possibility. So I'll be working on getting my mother to consider letting M. pick her up and ease her towards Maine a few hours at a time. "It's hugely important to me right now," M. said. And she said that it just seems silly to not let the people you care about know that you do. And that she's just going to put her good-will out into the world. And now I'm picturing it. Generations of us like links in a chain, holding onto one another on a rocky coast, nobody falling. 
And of course there will be me and the person I am legally restrained against mentioning--on islands of our own making.

Love Conquers All

You can read more here:  http://thesmartlyla.com/?p=978