Something's Amiss

Wait. What? That’s not the way it happened…

It was Christmas night, and Dave and I were watching TV. We were not watching the news, neither a Fox re-write of the 2020 election results nor an MSNBC grind on some GOP folly. We were watching It’s a Wonderful Life on Amazon Prime, and a critical segment of the movie had been cut. 

It had been a lovely day of opening gifts in front of a cozy fire with daughter Casey, 6-year-old Eleanor, son-in-law PJ, and their dear old dog, Tallulah. We’d exchanged cheery texts with friends, sisters, and nephews, and enjoyed a Zoom call with my son and his family. For dinner, we savored Dave’s homemade lasagna, baccala, and stuffed calamari. How lovely to settle in after all the hubbub and excitement with some black and white serenity and the familiar holiday message of It’s a Wonderful Life.  

For those who don’t know the story – and there can’t be many of you – good guy George Bailey had repeatedly given up his dreams of travel to bolster the Bedford Falls Savings and Loan Company. This small bank enabled the town’s hard-working people to buy homes rather than rent from the wealthy, scheming Mr. Potter. Potter finally gets his chance to sink the Savings and Loan when George’s addled uncle misplaces an $8,000 deposit. Potter refuses George’s plea for help and tells him that, because George has a $10,000 life insurance policy, he’s worth more dead than alive. As his misfortunes mount, George decides the world would indeed be better if he had never lived. He heads to the river intending to jump.

Enter Clarence, a wing-less angel, Heaven-sent, to help George understand his value.  

CUT!

What? Yes! Cut! The trip back in time to a George-less world. Cut! The scene where George’s little brother dies because George isn’t there to save him. Cut! The embittered citizens living in Potter’s Field squalor without a kindly Savings and Loan to support them. Cut! Worst of all – ghastly really - George’s wife consigned to life as an Old Maid of a Librarian. Cut! Every scene showing George how important he had been in the lives of so many. Instead, we next see George gleefully sprinting through the snowy streets of Bedford Falls, inexplicably restored to good spirits. 

Since its release in 1946, It's a Wonderful Life has become a Christmas classic, a reminder of the ripples every one of us generates in all we do, whether we are given to know the impacts or not. Why would the geniuses behind Amazon Prime mess with a movie we all treasure and know so well? 

Reportedly, they felt the deleted scenes were too dark. 

Too dark? Please. Amazon Prime offers Silence of the Lambs  and Psycho. Graphic violence is available to all ages at all times, yet A Wonderful Life required censorship? Was this a sample of some soulless AI editing or the work of an ignorant corporate pup who understood neither the message nor the importance of tradition? 

In fairness, I confess I am not one to go to the mountain for the First Amendment. I’ve always taken issue with First Amendment sanctions cited to allow hate speech, Klan marches in Black neighborhoods, or Neo-Nazi marches through those that are Jewish. I feel the First has loftier goals, protection of the right to speak out against unjust laws or government, not license to preach and practice harm. My son and I have had some conversations about this: who would dictate what should be censored and where it should stop? I get his point, but still… 

Perhaps I’m over-reacting to Amazon's edits to It's a Wonderful Life, but with politicians and social media obscuring truth, the free press under assault, and Texan textbooks “softening” history to avoid causing discomfort, I’m concerned to see how readily the powerful can change a storyline. 

Lately, reality and fiction seem blurred with a convicted felon in line for the presidency, an anti-vaxxer nominated to head Health and Human Services, an accused sexual predator for Department of Defense, and a Vengeance advocate for the FBI. If we didn’t already feel something was amiss, here in Easton, the very heavens shuddered on the Eve of 2025. Thunder blasted celestial anger, lightning flashed, and torrents pelted the beleaguered Earth. Surely Shakespeare would have written it just so.   

 

 

 

 

Winter Tree

It’s February, and we just took down our Christmas tree. I’d begun to feel sheepish about it’s lengthy tenure, but every evening, when early night shuttered the world beyond our windows, we’d turn on the tree lights, and their glow banished the season’s bleak darkness. 

“We should take it down,” I started saying in mid-January. 

“Not yet,” Dave would say as he looked gratefully toward the tree beaming in the corner. “I’m not ready.”

I wasn’t either, but somehow it felt slovenly to hold onto Christmas for so long. 

We were late, for us, in getting it up in the first place.  A storm had encased twigs and branches in ice and we’d hoped for a thaw before heading to Maple Row Farm to choose and cut a tree.  This was the one week of winter that held the cold, however, so our boots crunched over frozen grasses, and light glanced off brittle ice trees by the time we walked into the farm fields. 

We thought the cold would limit our usual meandering hunt, that we’d be willing to settle for the gaps between branches or lack of aroma that usually eliminate contenders. But no. We trudged up the hills, to the edges of the rows, stopping to mull over each other’s finds, diplomatically taking a pass, and continuing on.

Finally, the tree was selected and lugged, heavy with the weight of its icy coat, to the side of the trail for pick-up by a tractor.  When eventually we loaded it onto our car, the farm hand who helped us said, “be sure it thaws before you bring it into the house, otherwise the warm air will shock it and it’ll drop its needles.”

A fortuitous caution: we hadn’t thought of that.  This meant an added delay in putting it up, so we were entitled to enjoy it for all those extra weeks. Plus, our 14-months-old granddaughter, Eleanor, loved it. Whenever she came to visit, she immediately looked to the corner, pointed at the tree, and if the lights weren’t on, pointed at the switch. Then we would stand, the baby in my arms or Dave’s, our faces bright against the green pine, as she reached for her favorite ornaments.

I’d unhook each one from its branch, and Eleanor would stroke the fur of the tiny fuzzy fox, marvel at the sparkles on the delicate glass balls, and clamor to hold felt angels and Santas. She never seemed to develop the affection that Dave and I have for the cardboard toilet-paper-roll angel that Tucker made in 1985 that graces the treetop every year, but she was fascinated, of course, by the fragile glass icicles and longed to clutch them. 

I wonder what she’ll think when she arrives on Saturday and the tree, by now a familiar fixture, is gone.

Last week, our daughter-in-law, Lisa, called from Boston with little Paul and Lexi to FaceTime. We showed the kids the tree, and I said, “You know, it’s not really a Christmas tree anymore; it’s a Winter Tree.” Paul remembers everything, and I know the name will resurface when next year’s tree stands firm in that corner in February.  

The tree stopped taking water about two weeks ago.  We’d add a little periodically, just in case it was thirsty, but we’ve made the mistake in the past of keeping the tray filled and dealing with a mess when the time came to cart the tree out. This year, the mess wasn’t about water, but pine needles. For the past few days, without any hint of air currents or someone brushing by, the tree would release a shower of needles, their descent an audible pffffttttt as they flowed through their brethren to the quilt encircling the base. This morning, a number of branches were totally bare, and the needles on the floor were inches deep. I could have started a business making those little pine souvenir pillows they sell in Vermont gift stores.   

As Dave and I gingerly plucked off ornaments and unstrung the lights, more needles, the tenacious survivors, sprinkled on our shoulders and sleeves. Long gone as it was, still the tree treated me to a waft of balsam-sweet scent as I gripped the trunk and lifted it when Dave freed it from the metal stand.

We maneuvered it past the piano and out the door to the screened porch and then the yard, leaving a green scattered path all the way. As I do every year, I was a little teary as I said good-bye and whispered, “Thank you. You were beautiful.”     

Walking Home Together

My email inbox is a daily delete extravaganza. I’ve signed countless petitions since the 2016 election thus granting email access to every hopeful Democrat running for office in every state; and every climate, immigration, animal rights, and environmental organization striving to keep me apprised, active, and donating.  So, I click, click, click… delete.  Click, click, click… delete, stopping occasionally to sign another petition or make a small donation.  Yes!  I know! I’m only encouraging them, but our times are dire, and I can’t totally check out. 

As a result, I’m impatient with emails; I just want to get through them.  Sheepishly I confess that when I get animated cards, I often “click to the end.” What a sad metaphor for life.  I can’t even take a few minutes to watch sweet lovebirds string ribbons into a heart on a Valentine’s Day card?  To watch buds sprout and daffodils bloom on Mother’s Day?  To watch deer and squirrels gather beneath reddening oaks at Thanksgiving?  How many smiles have I sacrificed to more quickly empty my inbox?     

True to form, when in early December, my Farmington friend, Whip, sent me and Jen, my junior year roommate, the Jacquie Lawson Cotswolds Advent calendar, I thought I’ll take a quick peek and move on. Wisely, Whip sent a heads-up text first, with an added, “BTW, in your ‘Cotswold home,’ click on the various objects for games – and every day you can click on the bookcase to read a little about the theme for that day.”

Bookcase?  Games?  My Cotswold home?   Hm. Still. I wanted to zip through emails and get back to my To-Do list. I clicked on the link, followed instructions, and the calendar opened… with music, a horse-drawn cart clopping down the street, and a gentle snow fall.

Ohhhhhh.  Something pinched and rushed eased inside me as, using the slide bars on the side and top of the computer screen, I “strolled” through the village past cottages with leaded windows and peaked dormers mounded with snow.  I followed a nice couple over a stone bridge and gazed at the Christmas tree on the other side of the river. Chudleigh’s Tavern beckoned from a side street. It looked like my kind of place: I’d like to grab Dave for a beer and glass of wine there sometime soon.  

When given the option to “decorate” a woodland tree, I chose from an array of ornaments to drag and drop in the boughs of a bushy pine.  I clicked on my garland of choice and tried to drag it to the tree, but it wouldn’t move. I tried again, nothing. Suddenly, the tree lit up… and shimmered.  It was beautiful,and the surge of elation filling my chest took me by surprise.  If that weren’t enough, when I clicked the blue star to go into “my house,” my tree was there in the corner, exactly as I’d decorated it. 

With clicks, I lit the candles on the mantle and set the fire ablaze. Two kittens curled in a snug nest by the fire, and a friendly dog lying near the sofa lifted his head and looked at me. I was flooded with giddy wonder.  I felt like… like I did when I was 8, opening the tiny door of an advent calendar, yearning for Christmas to hurry up and get here, a feeling I hadn’t had in decades.  I had to share this with others, so I went to Jacquie Lawson’s website and sent off calendars to a few friends, my daughter, and daughter-in-law. 

Soon, Casey texted, “So fun! I JUST WRAPPED PRESENTS!”  How delighted she’ll be when she sees her wrapped gifts under the tree in “her house.” 

When Carey opened her calendar, she wrote, at 2:00 AM, that she was getting a kick out of coordinating fireworks with classical Christmas music. No doubt, given my post-menopause affliction, I was also awake at 2:00 AM, but not looking at my calendar.  So the next morning, I was fascinated when I saw her message.  Fireworks? I pulled up the calendar and clicked like crazy, but again, nothing. Clearly I don’t have instinctive computer skills. 

“How did you activate the fireworks?” I texted. 

“I’m not sure,” she responded. “Maybe they only happen at night?  Am I right that the calendar has day and night?” 

Whoa. Day and night? I want to write Jacquie Lawson a thank you note and applaud her brilliant creativity.  

Once darkness fell, I whipped out my computer, and opened the Cotswold scene.  The sky had darkened since I checked in earlier that day, and a silvery light bathed the village.  The calendar moon was in the same phase as the moon rising beyond the barn across our street. Amazing. I clicked on the sky and boom!  A bloom of red lights! Click.  Boom! Green!  Click. Boom!  White!

I emailed Whip.  “Did you know about the fireworks?  Only at night.  Click the sky!”

Forty-five years ago, Jen, Whip and I lived in the same dorm and were close as sisters. After we graduated, we went to different colleges.  We wrote letters for a while, then our correspondence petered away to Christmas cards. Eventually, I dropped that too. About seven years ago, Meredith, the third in a junior year three-room with Jen and me, coordinated with Jen to plan a mini-reunion. Meredith has lived in France for decades, returning to the US in the summer. She is tenacious about traditions and friendships: she does not let them slide. That summer gathering has become an annual event, renewing friendships long dormant, bringing Whip, Jen, and Meredith back, actively, into my life.  

                     L to R: Andy, Meredith, Lea, Maurita, Vickie, Whip, Jen, 1971

Turned out Whip, the Giver-of-Cotswold-Joy, did not know about the fireworks. She passed the discovery on to Jen who looked forward to trying it later, noting that she was addicted to the calendar’s Solitaire game. Whip confessed to a similar compulsion, but added, “I shouldn’t be playing. I don’t have time to get addicted – work and Xmas stuff, plus my mom just got home from rehab, etc.”

Jen texted, “Hope your mom is okay.  Rehab?”

“Mom was in the hospital, and then was so weak she was in rehab for 3 weeks getting her strength back. Now she’s home, but too scared to get out of bed for fear she’ll fall.”  And she added, “Lea, I’m sure you’re remembering your wonderful mom with love this Christmas, and missing her a lot.” 

Jen texted, “I was just saying to someone the other day that getting old is REALLY hard… [My mother] absolutely refuses to use a cane or walker, though she is afraid of falling too. So she ‘furniture walks’ and is not nearly as active as she could be.”

By the time I checked my phone, the threads were long, a mix of calendar high points with a comforting purge of common worries and frustrations. Whip’s mother had become grouchy with age, adding to the difficulty of caring for her. Jen commiserated, “Sorry Whip!  I know how tough this is. I pray I’ll always be nice to my daughters.“

Late to the exchange, I chimed in,  “Hi! First, the happy thing… the calendar! Even on this rainy day, I woke up thinking Ooooo!  What will today hold? Last night I was able to click on the darting elf – a moment of triumph! – and he did a little wiggle dance! And the fireworks were such a discovery… how lovely to “walk” thru the village in the moonlight!  Thank you Whip!  Such fun!

“As to aging, Dave’s Aunt Cam, who was feisty and vibrant ‘til she died at 94 (her friend came to pick her up for Bingo and found her dressed and ready, but dead… THAT’s the way to go) Anyway, she always said to me, ‘Lea, do yourself a favor and don’t get old.’” 

Whip answered, “Aging is truly terrifying… I’m so grateful for my daughters, and hope I’m decent to them when I’m elderly. I didn’t know the elf did a dance when you click on him! I’ll try that!” 

“Age truly, is not for sissies,” I replied.  “Now I recognize how much courage it takes to age gracefully.  And re. the elf, not sure if it’s related, but when I clicked on the stockings, 2 little guys popped out and the elf ran thru soon after.  Hopefully we know more than our parents did about diet, exercise, and involvement in people and causes beyond ourselves.” 

As if on cue, Jen picked up the thread having returned from Pilates.  “I am SO grateful for my friends, more than ever in past years. I guess it’s partly age and partly circumstances that have really made me think about priorities. Now I’m going to get my calendar back up and try to find that elf!” 

Believe me, the elf is not easy to catch. But I loved the weird, wonderful weaving of calendar magic and… friendship magic; the comfort of facing life’s phases with women who have known me, and each other, for decades and decades. As teenagers, boys and schoolwork consumed our conversations, now, health, parents, kids, grandkids, and politics absorb us. Crazy. 

My favorite quote – a plea in today’s fractious times! – is that we are all here to walk each other home. The holiday season is expansive in its means to help us do that, through the spirit of giving, the smiles of strangers, the pull of home, the poignancy of memories, years-long bonds, and even shared glee over a Cotswold calendar. 

                                L to R: Whip, Meredith, Lea, Jen, Fall 1970

                                   L to R: Meredith, Jen, Whip, summer 2019

                                               (You all know what I look like!)

Passed Along

The tiny sticker on the underside of the silver pitcher reads “15.”  Somewhere, in one of the bins and boxes from my parents’ home that have migrated to our attic, is the list of Mom and Dad’s wedding presents. If I wished, I could search out that list, flip through the pages, run my finger down to #15, and find the gift-giver. 

Mom gave me the pitcher just months before she felt sick.  For a while she’d been trying to whittle down the belongings accumulated over fifty-five years lived in the house.  She’d opened the kitchen cupboard and waved toward four pitchers on the shelf, saying,  “Take one if you want.”  Silver is not the usual in our rustic, 1782 home, but I really liked this graceful remnant from an elegant era. 

When I noticed the “15” on the bottom of the pitcher as it dried upside-down in the dish rack, my nose prickled in imagining the wrapped gift arriving at Mom’s childhood home, 12 Upper Ladue, sometime in the fall of 1951.  

Since Mom passed, I’ve come to know her young self far better through her letters.  My father was stationed in Germany and Mimi wrote to “My Dearest Darling Paul” every day. She was nineteen years old and missed her man fiercely.  She yearned for marriage and a time when they could be together, but everything was uncertain, threatened by the possibility of Paul’s deployment to Korea.  In letters to his father, Paul spoke of his loneliness and fear that “this troubled world” and deployment might prevent a future with Mimi.  

He was only twenty-two. A boy far from home at Christmas… and in reading his letters, my heart ached for that lonely, young guy who became my father.

Their handwriting, so familiar to me, appears fresh on the page. Despite sixty-five years stored in a cardboard box, the blue stationary has held its color.  I know how life turned out for Paul and Mimi: they married, had three (wonderful) daughters, four cherished grandchildren, lifelong friends, travels, careers, and collections.  And with their pitcher in my hand, my eyes fill to think that it all lay before them when first Mimi opened that package and unfolded the white tissue within.  

  

Now that my mother’s life has ended and I have moved into the matriarch phase she just left, I am acutely conscious of the passage of time, and each generation making way for the next.  As Dave and I decorated the house, changed bed sheets, put up the tree, and wrapped gifts, I recalled the aura of past Christmases at my grandparents’ homes: candles flickering, flaming plum pudding, stiff needlepoint chairs, fancy dress, and the expectation that kids keep a low profile.  

When my grandmother died and Mom took over, my grandmother’s candelabra found its place on my parents’ dining room table, and the needlepoint chairs, around it.   The plum pudding was dramatic, but never tasted as good as it promised to be, so my brother-in-law’s silky fudge and rum sauce over ice cream replaced it.  And the children?  Far from low profile, they became the focus. Still, those homes of the past made us feel cherished and safe; Dave and I hold the grandparent title now, and strive to embrace our kids and their families in those same ways… minus the plum pudding and finger-to-lips admonitions to behave.   

When my sisters and I divided the contents of my parents’ home, I did not clamor for the needlepoint chairs or the candelabra, and certainly, none of us wanted Mom’s white plastic kitchen chairs, but I really wanted the dry sink in the den. It was the first piece of furniture Mom and Dad bought together, and I loved its heavy, primitive look. Plus, it is scarred with a twisting groove that teenaged Lea idly carved with an ice pick while talking on the phone with friends.  

Since our marriage in 1975, Dave and I have been doing an every-other-year rotation between the  Sylvestros and Ingersolls for the holidays, and this would have been a year with Mom. When we discussed what the new plan might be, our new grand daughter Lexi was just weeks old and Eleanor was still afloat in Casey’s belly, so it made sense to hold Christmas at our house in Connecticut. My sisters, Rita and Francie, and their families, were willing to make the trip and stay minutes away at the humble, but reasonably comfortable, Hotel Hi-Ho. 

For years, the Hi-Ho, conveniently perched on a slope just above the Merritt Parkway, was rumored to have been a trysting destination, a pay-by-the-hour sort of spot.  While its huge, red, neon sign was easily visible to cars whizzing by, more often than not one, two, or three letters were out of order. So the “HO_EL HI- _O” was a local joke until recent renovations spruced it up.  Tucker, Lisa, Paul, and Lexi would stay with us, while Casey, PJ and Eleanor live nearby.  

In the week before Christmas, Dave and I attacked detailed To-Do lists each day.  As has been tradition since first we were married, Dave rolled out his homemade lasagna noodles, simmered the sauce, and assembled two huge casseroles. I baked “Happy Winter” fudge cakes and made crepes. We shopped for non-perishables on Monday the 18^thand perishables on the 22^nd. Mixed up artichoke dip and blanched crudité on the 23^rd.   Ordered window shades for the guest room and crossed our fingers they’d ship in time... They did not. 

The dishwasher was crammed with the detritus of those preparations.  Mixing bowls, plates, ladles, and spoons.  Measuring cups, spatulas, dishes, and mugs. 

“Hon?  Be sure to run the dishwasher before you come to bed, will you?” I said on the evening of the 22^nd. 

I was brushing my teeth when Dave entered the bathroom, grim of visage, and said, “The dishwasher’s not filling.”

“Not filling?” I said, or whatever garbled response might have emerged through the toothpaste. 

Yes.  The day before our loved ones arrived, the dishwasher broke down. When I spoke to the repairman’s rep the next day, hoping for a mercy visit given the circumstances, she laughed and said, “That’s how it always goes.” 

Ah well.  As my sister Rita said, plenty of bonding at the sink. Plus, she’s a party diva and after my desperate call, she arrived with bags of paper goods.  Would my grandmother have tolerated such a substitution? Maybe not, but Mom would have welcomed it. 

Were they there, Mom and Dad?  Beyond the toasts, tales, memories, and love?  Beyond their touch on the pitcher and wooden dry sink?  Beyond their names carried on in their great-grandchildren, Eleanor and Paul?  

After he died, Dad arranged a bounty of signs to let us know he was still around, while Mom kept her peace when she passed. But I have to think they could not have resisted a Christmas visit to see Jared and Campbell - now men in their twenties - on the floor playing cars with little Paul.  To see Tucker and Casey, holding each other’s babies. To see three elfin great-grandchildren in matching pajamas, and little Eleanor, already an activist, pumping her fist in the air.  To see Bill and Rita prancing in Santa and reindeer outfits.  To see my sisters, giggling all the way, smuggling in two of Mom’s sheet-shrouded white plastic kitchen chairs. 

Yeah, I have to think they showed up.  

Each of You, Shelter for the Other

We have a half hour to kill before the family photos.  Mom visits the bridal suite looking regal in a silky white shirt and long black skirt.  I line up the bridesmaids for a picture with her, feeling childishly pleased to nab a shot the photographer won’t have.  I’m not a competitive person.  Really.

Then we whisk and rustle downstairs to find Casey and PJ who have returned from their First Look photo shoot.  They beam at us and at each other, but there’s little time to talk as the photographer marshals us in quick succession up the raised platform at the head of the ballroom.  For a week, the forecasts had whittled away hope of a sunny, waterside ceremony, but gratefully, the rain had held off  - almost – for the wedding party and First Look photos. Now, however, it is pouring in earnest.

Quickly now!  It’s almost 5:30 – showtime! – and guests are milling around in the foyer as family groupings scamper to the stage to pose.  Hurry! No time for shifting positions, adjusting corsages, closed eyes, or odd expressions.  Coax baby Paul to smile!  Goofy faces and kissy lips,  “Hey Paul!  Hey little guy!” Then we hustle off into the back room while the guests filter in to take their seats.

Whew!  Breathe, breathe.  Yes, thanks, a flute of champagne would be heavenly. The staff, Laina and Eddie– our friends, by this point – are taking care of us.  We peek into the hall and see a line-up of loved ones, so we sneak out for hugs.  It’s hard to retreat because everyone in that line is someone we cherish.

OMG! The veil!  We forgot the veil!  Casey was not to wear it until the ceremony, so in the photo schedule flurry, it was left in the bridal suite.  Karis runs up to get it and returns.  Respectful of its age and delicacy – it has been worn by Ingersoll brides since the 1800’s - she gives the veil to me to tuck snugly into my daughter’s hair, just above her braided bun. 

Shouldn’t be a challenge, but I’m struggling.  The comb won’t slide in.  “I think it’s backwards,” says one of the bridesmaids gently.  She is right. But it’s not easy to wrest that backwards comb from the clutches of Casey’s elegant hairdo.  Again, I’m holding my breath, self-conscious before all of those watching and waiting. 

“I think it’s off-center, Mom,” says Casey.  Shit.  She’s right.  What is my problem?  I wiggle it a little and try to convince her it’s fine, but it’s not.  One of the girls takes over and eases out the comb, starts over, and it’s perfect.  Beautiful.  Tradition and the good wishes of all those generations of Ingersoll brides riding with her, flowing down her back. 

“All right everyone,” says Laina,  “Time to line up!”

We place champagne flutes on the silver trays offered, look around for our partners, and shuffle into line.  Which side?  Who goes first?  Why didn’t we pay attention during the rehearsal?  

I’ll be walking with Steve, Dave’s brother, who is officiating today.  He must be nervous, but he looks only happy as he takes my arm.  You’d never know that he and Casey’s cousin, Christopher, had rushed over during this morning’s downpour to dismantle and wrestle the arbor from the lawn by the shore, it’s initial, wistful placement.  Dripping wet, they had lugged it into the ballroom and reassembled it on the stage so Casey would be married beneath the arbor her father made, just as she’d envisioned.

As we take our places in line, I gesture to the ballroom full of loved ones turned expectantly our way and I say to Steve, “None of this would be happening if it weren’t for you and me.”

He looks puzzled, and I continue, “If you and I hadn’t met and gone sledding together on that snowy slope at Trinity in ’73, I wouldn’t have met and married Dave.” A smile breaks across his face and we snug our linked elbows tighter.

“Your turn!” says Eddie, and Steve and I, first in line, head down the steps.

                                    *                                  *                                  *       

“It’s a typical night at SBC, the restaurant and bar sounds ever present throughout the high ceilinged brewery. She’s new, confident, and catches his eye.  She checks out the frosted blond tips in his hair, diamonds in his ears, a lip ring, and thinks to herself, ‘He thinks he’s cooler than me.  So not true.’ 

“He watches her trying to be cute as she slowly approaches. The young girl then trips and stumbles.  All coolness gone, she looks up; he looks down…and they both start laughing.”

So began Casey and PJ’s romance, and so Steve begins the service.  Everyone in the ballroom cracks up at the story of this inauspicious first meeting.

One of the things Casey loves best about PJ is his sense of humor, and she likes that quality in herself as well, although hers tends toward the slapstick.  There’s nothing that makes her laugh like someone taking an arm-flinging, feet-flailing fall, although she claims she always make sure the person’s okay before she cracks up. In the days before the wedding, she was relaxed about glitches, saying, “If one of the flower girls runs out crying, that’ll be funny.  If I trip on the way down the aisle, that’ll be funny.”  But no one flees and no one falls, and the service, conducted by her uncle who knows and loves her, is funny without any casualties.  

Up on the platform beneath Dave’s arbor, their attendants flanking them, the room full of loved ones with glistening eyes, Casey, and PJ are radiant, beaming with emotion so powerful it crosses boundaries and spills into tears.  They had discussed this with Steve, Casey voicing her concern that she and PJ would break down bawling in the middle of the service.  Steve said he’d take care of it and would slip her a flask if she looked like she needed it.  She does and he did.  Luckily, the grandmothers don’t pick up on the exchange, but those who do howl with laughter.

And so the ceremony swings, from laughs to poignant and meaningful.  Lindsay, the matron of honor, reads a passage from Mitch Albom’s Tuesday with Morrie that closes, “[Morrie] ended the subject by quoting a poem he believed in like a prayer, ‘Love each other or perish.’”

Steve reflects on the saying, “No man or woman is an island unto himself or herself.  Both are part of a greater continent.”  He speaks of PJ, “a self-professed non-world traveler” helping Casey select the perfect backpack for her trip to Asia, even while fervently wishing she wouldn’t go.  He mentioned PJ’s return to grad school and his athletic endeavors, and Casey’s professional accomplishments at Lululemon. “You both possess spirits individual and adventurous, yet coming together, islands within that continent…You have maintained the ability to keep on laughing and remain silly, keeping your lives upbeat and calm, when at times I’m sure it feels like you’re awash in a sea of chaos.”

Maybe it was time to swing back to some humor?  So Steve tells the story, in PJ’s words, of the night PJ proposed to Casey.  “I had all FREAKIN’ DAY to stew on how I was going to do it, what my wording would be, and how smooth my delivery was going to be (yeah, right.)  Here I am – cool, calm, collected – until she pulls in the driveway.  Case gets home and instantly hops in the shower…ten more minutes of stewing…finally she comes out, freshly dressed and still wearing a turbie twist towel on her head.  I get down on my knee and pop the question.  After asking me if I was serious seven to ten times and leaving me down on my knee, she accidentally knocks the ring out of my hand and it goes flying across the room. I think we both agree we wouldn’t have had it any other way.”

Songs and guitars have always played the background music of Casey’s life.  Since the seventies, it has been a tradition at Sylvestro weddings for the musicians of the family to play Paul Stookey’s Wedding Song.  There might have been some inward groans among guests not familiar with the song or the players upon hearing the game plan announced, but groans gave way to pleased grins and nostalgic tears as PJ’s Uncle Dan joined Dave, Steve, Trevor, and Christopher in performing the melody they’ve played together for decades. 

       

True to the bride and groom’s love of the bizarre and the funny, they have asked groomsman Tony Deluca to read Cath Crowley’s poem, Graffiti Moon: “If my like for you was a football crowd, you’d be deaf  'cause of the roar.  And if my like for you was a boxer, there’d be a dead guy lying on the floor.  And if my like for you was sugar, you’d lose your teeth before you were twenty.  And if my like for you was money, let’s just say you’d be spending plenty.”

The vows are a natural follow-up once the laughter quiets and Tony returns to the groomsmen line-up.  With eyes bright, full of love and tears, PJ and Casey promise to “love who you are now and who you are yet to become.  I promise to listen to you and learn from you, to support you and accept your support.  I will celebrate your triumphs and mourn your losses as though they were my own.  I will love you and have faith in your love for me, through all our years and all that life may bring us.”

After the exchange of rings, Casey’s cousin, Trevor, reads an Apache blessing, assuring them, “Now you will feel no rain, for each of you will be shelter for the other…” And Steve follows with a benediction universal in its message:

The way is long – let us go together

The way is difficult – let us help each other

The way is joyful – let us share it

The way is ours alone – let us go in love

The way grows before us – let us begin.    

There is the briefest of solemn moments as Steve’s words die away, then Casey hoots, “WE’RE MARRIED!” She and PJ kiss and kiss and kiss, then the bride pumps her bouquet in celebration, and the new husband and wife strut on down the aisle.