wedding, reception

Poor James.

Relying on Google GPS is faith misplaced. And that caused us to be late. And that burdened his resilient but still sensitive mind. That and temporary time zone confusion. His phone adjusts automatically when moved between zones, but his rental car does not, with its large clock saying it’s one hour earlier than it is. He knows that but sometimes forgets.

I am no help at all. I don’t even know the name of the church we are going to. I never looked for its location. In fact, I discarded all that information when I decided I wouldn’t be going. 

You know, sometimes dummkopfs are just lucky. The Lord takes interest in us and assigns special angels to watch over us dingbats. I bet. I didn't even make a reservation. I thought "reserved a block for the wedding" meant a room was reserved for me. But it wasn't. There was only one room left and it was a great one. It was overly luxurious. For me. My older brother with sense to reserve had one queen-size bed for two fat people and me with no sense at all had a room with two queen-size beds for one skinny person. And somehow I sensed the presence of angels going, "We got you covered, Dude." 

And I don’t care about being late. I don’t care about missing a few beats. 

But James does care and he has the additional pressure of getting his family in order. Alona does what she can about keeping him straight, going down the right road, being on time and such, and a good part of that is laughing in the right places. 

The church is in the middle of nowhere. How people decide where a church needs to be is beyond me. Maybe it's three or so people of the same odd denomination decide they could use a separate building and the place either grows to a real sized church or it doesn't. It's so remote from everything else that even Google Earth does not provide a street level view. And this is America, not Timbuktu. 

The two boys look like real gentlemen dressed in their tuxedos and shined leather shoes. While we all know it's not them at all. Boys will be boys however they’re shined up and they don’t care how their parents dress them. They have no idea how spectacular they look. In fact, they look better than anyone. They top all of us. You’d think they had some sort of training. But they don't.

Naturally we joked, “Hey! Where’d you get these two penguins?” And so naturally the boys pick up the joke and waddled around with their arms held to their sides and their hands bent backwards and upwards as flippers, tilting side to side with each step, always joking, always goofballs, working off each other perfecting their penguin imitations. From monkeys, to penguins, through kittens, cows, dogs, coyotes, eagles, horses, dragons, snakes, crows, wolves, owls, ducks, pigs, turkeys, the boys continue to build their animal vocalizations. And it is funny. When you are in possession of a mind of a boy, as James does and I do. 

Poor Alona. 

She is stuck in the company and care of four boys. 

This woman is a blast. My brother really did marry upward. He knows how lucky he is. 

So we were late. I like it that way. And nobody chided us. Everyone knows what James went through to be here. And they’re glad we showed up at all. The wedding was short and sweet. And that makes a more perfect religious ritual. All the essentials, and only the essentials, brought off delightfully and with humor and fun.

My favorite part of the whole thing, I must say this right out. My favorite nephew sang a song that I hadn’t heard before. I will not flatter with false praise. I will not say Matthew is the best singer possible, but I will say he is the best choice. And when he happened to glance at his sister while singing, and his voice audibly faltered with genuine emotion at this turning point in their lives my heart is filled with affection for both of them, brother and sister, who clearly love each other and allow that to show so publicly, so touchingly tender. And we all felt that same thing at the same time. Not just me. That one moment made the whole trip worthwhile and I am stricken with awe for my brothers and sisters each having such awesome children and they are they are real wonders in themselves to behold.

And the littlest are direct as a dart. “Uncle Bo, why don’t you get married?” 

“Because I’m waiting for you to grow up to marry you.” 

“You’ll be dead.” 

(How rude! He actually calculated our relative ages and my impending death) “I’m going to live long enough to marry you.”

“Boys can’t marry boys” 

“Yes we can. Goofballs can marry goofballs if they want.” 

“You’re a goofball.” 

“So are you.” 

So it’s off to the reception. 

“Dada, why do we have to go to the reception?"

“It’s what people do after a wedding. They get back together to party away from the church.”

“But I’m hungry. I want to have dinner.”

“They’ll serve dinner at the reception.” 

“What will we eat?”

I interject crisply, “We’re going to eat fart-pies.” 

This cracks up the boys and enlivens their imaginations. They go from whinging to excited and noisy. Nothing gets boys worked up faster than farts and poo.

“I’m going to eat a fart-pie and fart all over the barn.” 

“And all the big fat people will eat a pile of fart-pies and everyone will be farting. 

“It’s going to be a fart-war and the whole barn will be pressurized with intense fat farts.” 

“Until someone lights a match and ka-blam the whole barn explodes to little splinters.”

And there were pies. Brenda makes pies. And boy, does Brenda ever make pies. We all knew that Brenda would make pies, but no one expected Brenda to make three tortes for each person. In every regular torte flavor. No one anticipated Brenda would make a dozen cookies of six types for each person. No one predicted there would be pulled pork, roasted chicken, potato casserole, meatloaf, potato salad, rotini pasta for three times the number of expected people, known by the number of chairs. Easily three times the amount of ice tea and lemonade, beer and wine. (But strangely no coffee, and no milk. All those cookies and absent the regular drinks that go with them) This was not a miscalculation. This was on purpose. These people eat! And they never ever run out. Still, no one could foresee that ice cream would be made by a tractor. 

Who on earth makes ice cream by tractor? 

Next to two other tractors in front of the barn. I thought they were rustic yard decorations. But they are not. They actually do things. 

Everyone thought these broken slabs would be too difficult a challenge for me to walk on. Everyone thought I'd be tripped up. But they haven't seen the sandstone pavements in Denver, nor the deplorable cement in spots of walkways. So each time I stepped out someone got up to make sure I don't break my neck.

And the two Portolets are out there. "Are you going to stand out there the whole time I'm doing a wee?"

"Yes."

I'm not that big of a spazz. But I accept the grace extended.

This is outside at the barn door where bride and groom and wedding party made their choreographed entrance with the wedding party.

The wedding party gals wore cowboy boots.

This is Amanda's visualization made true.

My favorite part of this reception was not all the food and the pies nor the dancing, and not the traditional music, the chicken dance, the polka, old rock and roll, and country, not the line dancing, not the bouquet tossing, not the traditional speeches, rather, it was my favorite nephew, the singer, who now sports long hair tied back and a beard, near the end when all his work for his sister was done, came and sat next to me for a long and uninterrupted relaxing personal chat. We talk about books. I write to him a lot and now I get to talk with him directly. He asked me if I had ever heard of Pinterest. 

Well, duh. 

He told me Amanda pinned everything that she saw about weddings that she liked and her Pinterest page is seemingly endless and he and my sister had to bring her back to earth explaining not everything she imagines can be done. There is only so much time. As much as they disliked disappointing her, she was not realistic about what people can do given only so much time.

So they discussed a tremendous number of things as a family committee. But sometimes opportunities arise when one must make an unauthorized executive decision. Similar to the Louisiana Purchase. At some place similar to Home Depot, possibly Home Depot itself, the business acquired a large chandelier from a steakhouse restaurant that they really wanted to get rid of so they offered it at an irresistible price of $100.00 to my sister and without having to think, much less having to confer, she snapped it up for the barn. Its actual value is much more than that. See, you need a gigantic place to hang such a thing.

A chandolier for a barn.

A big one, for $100.00.

And that changed everything. 

Come on. Is that awesome, or what? 

Yes, Sister. That is awesome.

The boys were having so much fun dancing like mad loons it compelled the whole place to join them. 

My brother-in-law, Amanda's dad.

The bottom trim of the bride's dress became filthy. Matthew told me that happens all the time to other bride's dresses.