Saturday we attended a friend’s wedding in D.C. The ceremony itself was at the National Cathedral and the reception was at the D.A.R. Fancy! I actually bought a new suit for the occasion (this being a late afternoon/evening affair, I took the opportunity to buy a black suit, which I had been regretful about not owning the last couple of times I’ve had to attend a funeral - not to turn this whole blog into Parenthetical Memento Morii, but there you go) and Cybele decked herself out stunningly in new togs as well (I had grave but unvoiced concerns about my wife upstaging the bride, but the bride herself told Cybele she looked great at the reception, so, etiquette crisis averted I suppose). Usually, unless something really disastrous happens, most weddings are by and large the same and the only details worth telling or remembering are little ones, and that was pretty much the case here. The ceremony was held in the choir of the church, which meant the bridesmaids in their floor-length dresses and heels had to climb several steps during the processional, but nobody wiped out. The best man told me later that the wedding ring he was keeping safely in his trouser pocket managed to sink beneath his keyring during the ceremony, which is something you don’t think about until you’re trying to smoothly and quietly remove said ring from said pocket without disturbing the solemnity with a bunch of spastic key-jangling. The pastor used the word “nerdliness” in the homily – quoting the bride and groom affectionately referring to each other, of course. The bride cried, the groom cried, several guests cried – you can do a lot worse than a by-the-books wedding.
The newly married couple were, always have been and presumably still are very, very visibly and obnoxiously in love with each other. And I mean that in the nicest way possible. I personally have the capacity for great cynicism but I have decided that I’m not going to let the ostentatious display of affection be something that gets on my nerves. I’m going to try to not even roll my eyes. I’ve just known far too many couples who treat each other with naked scorn as their default regard, who put down each other, their marriage and the whole notion of lifelong commitment to another human being. They act as if they were characters in a mean-spirited sit-com instead of actual human beings with souls in need of nurturing. That whole “marriage is hell, my spouse makes me miserable, but eh what can you do” schtick really does get on my nerves in the worst way, so I have to give its opposite a pass, and not just on someone’s wedding day. Suffice to say it was in great abundance on the Saturday in question.
So instead of making fun of the flush and rush of self-absorbed devil-may-care love, let’s just make fun of me, because I am an idiot. At the wedding reception the first dinner course was a mixed greens salad served with a pear poached in pinot noir and topped with Roquefort mousse. I know these particulars because they were written on petite cards tucked into the napkins at the place settings. I’m sure these printed meal line-ups have a name but I am ignorant as to what it might be and unwilling at the moment to strain my Google-fu by looking it up. My parents tried to impress a fair amount of high-end table manners on my brothers and me, and I absorbed enough of it that I hope I don’t come off as completely cloddish in more formal settings (I remember being the only person at my table of eight at junior prom who knew which fork to use in which order, but considering the town where I went to high school, that is a pretty remedial achievement). Nonetheless, sometimes my culturing ain’t what it oughtta be. Still, I was looking forward to that first course. I like pears! I like pinot! I like mousse! Yeah, I kind of glossed over that “Roquefort” part. Let the record show that I unequivocally hate blue cheese. I’m the guy who gets ranch dressing to go with his buffalo wings. I’m also the guy who is just uncultured enough to not know off the top of his head that Roquefort is, in fact, a rather pungent blue. Rest assured, though, that after one big bite of pinot-poached-pear and rancid death mousse (in my defense, the mousse was a lovely pale shade of green that went well with the salad) I will not soon forget where I’ve heard that Roquefort word before. (Also, I hasten to add that the main course and desserts were excellent.)
So, all in all, the wedding was elegant and lovely, and Cybele and I spent the night at a cozy little hotel downtown while Ebirah was being minded by visiting grandparents. It was our first overnight away from the little guy but it was greatly assisted by the length of the day, some walking, some dancing, and some free-flowing reception wine and champagne – by the time we headed to bed we were too bone-tired to obsess over the fact that Ebirah wasn’t right down the hall. Another milestone crossed.
Most parents of a one-year-old, assuming they were in their right minds, would have slept in and enjoyed the child-free Sunday morning, but while the rightness of our minds is debatable, we didn’t have any choice. Cybele’s vet clinic was hosting its annual open house and we needed to get back out to our house by 9 a.m. so that we could gather up baby, grandparents and dog and make it to the clinic before the doors opened at 11. Happily, we were successful – and so was the open house. As usual it was Halloween-themed, and the clients were encouraged to bring and dress up their pets, with bonus points for owners wearing outfits that matched their pets. Since we are trying to reinforce at every opportunity the idea that the dog is legally Ebirah’s, we dressed them both up as lobsters (store-bought toddler and pet costumes, respectively) and they were FREAKING ADORABLE. Ebirah’s costume was a bit more elaborate as it was basically padded footie pajamas with extra limbs sewed to the sides and a hood sporting both antennae and eyestalks. The dog’s costume was an exoskeleton-shaped cape with dangling limbs and an ill-fitting hood with antennae. Ebirah looked like a toddling crustacean-kaiju; the dog looked like he was giving a piggyback ride to a langoustine hit-and-run victim. Our dog was probably a little too big for the costume, as there were some much smaller pugs there who wore the same thing a bit more comfortably. In addition to a riot of animals in costumes, there were tons of kids there, a face-painter, a balloon-animal-artiste clown and a spread of snacks (subs and chips) and desserts (brain-shaped jello mold and the ever popular litter-box cake complete with melted Tootsie Roll scat). Also, considering the fact that the clinic is way out where you can just about see West Virginia on a clear day, I was gratified by the number of clients in Yankees jerseys in attendance, many of whom complimented me on my Yankees ballcap. (Originally I was going to dress myself up in an elaborate lobsterman costume to match baby and dog but lack of planning and preparation led me to go with boots and jeans and a thermal work shirt and a ballcap and if anyone asked I was going to say I was a “Yankee fisherman” but in retrospect I think that’s not so much a real phrase as the name of a seafood restaurant near my grandparents’ old beach house. In any case, no one asked.)
(And GO YANKEES, obviously. After expecting to miss Game 6 because of the wedding, I figured the rain postponement was a sign and I needed to stay up and watch the game Sunday night. The lack of home runs was kind of surprising; the Sandman’s performance at game’s end was not. And I was thankful for the distraction from the Giants’ lackluster performance against Arizona. When did the NFL decide the Cards were allowed to win on the East Coast now?)
For what it’s worth, I really enjoy being situated somewhere that allows me to take a best-of-both-worlds approach to collecting experiences. There are opportunities that a city affords which are harder if not impossible to come by out in the sticks, and vice versa. I reject the notion that there is one singular overriding city lifestyle or city type of person, and I equally reject that there’s one type of country person or way of doing things. Most of all I reject the stupid Hollywood idea that there’s a clear-cut dichotomy that has to be permanently resolved one way or the other. Somehow the myth continues to be perpetuated that you either run breathlessly in the rat race to keep up with shallow killjoys, or you quit your job and walk away from all sophistications in order to live a life closer to the earth and more real. What a crock. I have never experienced a blink of cognitive dissonance going from an archetypically urban experience one day to quintessentially rural the next and back again and again and again. Cabernet and kettle corn are not mutually exclusive, and woe to anyone who tries to tell me different.
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