Well, I don’t even know how long it’s been since my last post.  My daughter got married this month and, while life at the wedding-zoo was fun and magical and fascinating and celebratory and emotional and very, very important, I was still relieved to take the last guest to the airport at the end of it all and return to an empty home.

Silence cannot…I repeat cannot…be overrated.

A few of my favorite highlights:

1) Daughter is a costume maker and she and old friend Bombshell Bridesmaid dressed up one night in an authentic can-can dress and 17th century French court dress to go to a local, Idaho bar.  When I asked her she grinned and said nobody paid much attention because “they all know me by now.”

2) All the girls wore crowns. Daughter loves crowns and feels everyone should have them.  She sometimes wears one on bike rides.

3) Daughter loves a production and enrolled the weather gods to help.  After a heat wave that lasted weeks the wedding day dawned overcast and chilly with breezes.  Black storm clouds rolled in during the garden ceremony (with the wind occasionally blowing over the microphone to sound like thunder…pure genius) but nary a drop of rain ever fell.  Shortly before sunset the light broke through to make a rainbow that lasted close to half an hour for photo ops.  I mean really.  Bravo you guys.

4) The original wedding cake (a bass drum in honor of the drummer groom-now-son) slid off onto the baker’s garage floor during transport.  This was the back-up cake.  Note protective box.

The baker deserves a medal for this.  I mean, really.  Stunning.

5) The stylist for the girls was a no-show.  Enter, Son’s Bay Area girlfriend who just happened to have all the make-up and styling equipment necessary to prep five women for a wedding.  She swooped in and made them all gorgeous then zipped off to whip together her own exquisite coiffe.  (Who was that masked woman?!!)

7) Daughter and New Son just laughed, drank champagne, and waved every setback off.  They were totally in it for the ride.

8) Daughter included the promise to obey in her vows!  Naturally, nobody believed it but the dramatic effect was magnificent.

6) My aunt who’s a quilt maker pulled an unfinished quilt out of mothballs that my great grandmother started close to seventy years ago.  Originally pieced together from old pajamas, shirts, and house dresses but never backed, quilted, or edged, it passed first to my grandmother then my aunt fifty years ago.  Aunt decided it was high time to finish the thing in honor of great-great granddaughter’s marriage and I can’t be certain but it felt like the full lineage of matriarchs was present for the opening of the gift.  (Great group of old broads btw.  They were no doubt cracking bawdy jokes about the wedding night.)

On a serious note, I feel very, very fortunate that my daughter chose a good, kind, unflappable man with a huge heart and a quick brain, and that the two of them are SO well matched: eccentric, artistic, and profoundly laid back.  She can happily dance to his drumming for hours and he genuinely enjoys the weird and wonderful way she so often dresses.  Really, it’s kind of heartening that two such odd ducks could even find each other in a huge world full of trillions of people  like this, and even more surprising that they actually got married since I thought they’d just live together happily ever after.  Life is a mysterious, generous, magical thing sometimes.  It truly is.

To my daughter and new son: With all my heart I wish you a long and beautiful life together full of love, courage, willingness, and continued trust and faith in one another.  May the storm clouds forever mass on your horizons for dramatic effect, never actually break, and delight you afterwards with enduring rainbows.

I do so love you both,

Mom

p.s. I’ll cover Random Hot Tip About Dying #5 in my next post.  It seemed a little incongruous to add it here, even to me.