12/08/2003: "How I Spent My Weekend"
Music: The Wedding MarchMood: Relief
“Bad food is probably the best you can hope for at a wedding.”
I wish I’d said that. The friend I was corresponding with about this past weekend hit the nail exactly on the head. Weddings can be horrific experiences, so who is going to complain much about a substandard pork chop?
We are beginning to decompress at our household after a family wedding. Only one houseguest remains from the festivities. After a trip to the airport tomorrow afternoon, life will return to its familiar old pattern. Why, I might even have time to upload a new photo of my father and I visiting a family crypt last week.
Cultural propaganda would have us believe that all women adore weddings. The opening quote, supplied by an astute female, proves this is not universally true.
I approach weddings with a healthy measure of dread. Anytime you bring far-flung family members back together from around the globe, you’re engaging in a dangerous chemistry experiment. Even in the most civilized families, a wedding – or a funeral – represents the potential for disastrous combinations of air, fire, water and earth. It’s like going into your grandmother’s tool shed, opening all the cans and jars you can find there on the cobweb-covered shelves (many decorated with the popular skull-and-crossbones motif), and empting the contents into a bucket because you’re curious to learn what will happen when you mix it all together – and then maybe throw in a lighted match.
A wedding is an excellent opportunity for bitter accusations, angry tears, tearing open scabbed-over resentments, public humiliations, and the ever-popular temper-induced stroke. Waiting in the wings at every wedding is the potential for volcanic eruptions of long-buried psychological angst of the sort that sends people diving for the nearest meat cleaver. It can all lead to arrest, a jury trial, and the ultimate horror, a featured appearance on a sleazy Court TV crime drama. Imagine having yourself portrayed in tonight’s episode of “I Slaughtered The Bride.”
I'm happy to say our family wedding went off without a hitch. Indeed, it was pleasant, even joyful. My family made the decision, on some collective subconscious level, to relax and go with the flow. To my knowledge there was nary a harsh word spoken, not even to the smiling waitresses who served us sub-par food at the wedding supper.
Sometimes the angels of our better nature win one.
