Wedding Report #5: Molly & Eric

This was the last of the five-month wedding run. Mom came to Richmond on Thursday night, and we left early on Friday for the land of Grey's Anatomy and Starbucks. The wedding was in Port Gamble, a small town outside Seattle. On the way, we checked out (the gift shop of) the glass museum in Tacoma, and we might have seen a building made of shipping containers. We saw Molly and her family when we got to the hotel, then we got amazing pizzas from a local joint.

Let me take a break to tell you about Molly. Of those who are not related to me, I have known her and kept in touch with her longer than almost anyone. She didn't come to Henderson until she was in eighth grade and I was in ninth. She was my brother's age but was in some of my classes for math because her former school district had had a different math track, and because she's wicked smart. Then she was in the combined French 3/4 class with me, my brother, our friend Doug, and a very few others. We saw Elf together in the theater, and the first Harry Potter. Molly lives within walking distance, so when it snowed she would go with us to the elementary school with the good hills. Molly was studying in London while I was in France, so our moms came over one weekend and we all met in Paris. After college, I lived with her and her sweet dog for a few months. Molly is an awesome cook and a great encourager. It's so nice to go across the country to celebrate someone you've known for that long and enjoyed so much.

The wedding was in this tiny chapel in a slight drizzle. All the music was from the Harry Potter movies, most of it recognizable only to fans as diehard as Molly. The main color was dark purple. I knew all the bridesmaids. At the reception, we sat with some of Molly's coworkers, who told my mom they loved Molly and would take care of her.

The whole trip, Mom didn't stop telling me that all the trees were pointy. It was neat to be in an all-evergreen environment, and occasionally we would round a bend and encounter a majestic lake with mountains beyond it. I'm proud of Molly for embracing a new place and a new family, creating a life that suits her to a T, and always being true to herself and those who love her.

Wedding Report #4: Lindsey & Jeremy

This wedding was a long time ago. September 10. I started the fall semester two days later, and blogging hasn't been a priority since then, but I've felt that absence, so here goes.

Lindsey and Jeremy got married at Landfall, the ritzy country club in Wilmington. I left Richmond early in the morning and rolled in just in time for a luncheon at Elijah's on the waterfront. It was awesome to see Stacey and Lyndsay and Lindsey and to get to know the other bridesmaids I'd heard so much about. I remembered other meals I'd had there, the one where Sims called randomly in the middle of it just to see how I was, the one where Katie walked across the restaurant to fix the blinds for me because the sun was in my eyes, the dinner we had to say goodbye to the same Katie but she didn't even make it and I was bummed.

After a happy girly lunch, Stacey and Lyndsay and I met up with Stacey's husband Bobby and got ice cream at Kilwin's and took pictures at the river in our dresses and, well, I wouldn't even say we caught up because these are people with whom you pick up where you left off, no big whoop. Lyndsay is in Colorado, and she says it finally feels like a real life. Stacey is in a tiny not-even-town in North Carolina, Bobby working in his parents' store and Stacey home with baby Jonah. Best mental image of the trip: Bobby worked at Starbucks before they moved. Every employee gets a free pound of coffee or container of tea or whatever each week, and before they moved, everyone at the store gave Bobby their freebies, so their pantry out there in nowheresville is filled with options for coffee and tea and cocoa and any such thing they could want.

The rehearsal involved mostly walking up and down the aisle, and then for the rehearsal dinner we went to the Pilot House, right next door to where we had lunch. I saw not one but two videos of babies dancing, and the mosquitos came out something fierce but someone had bug spray to share.

I got back to Jeff and Brinley's and watched The Soup and talked with Brinley for a bit before sleeping in their guest room, which has a remote-control fan. On Saturday morning, I woke to the sound of Brinley using her KitchenAid; she was working on concord-grape-and-rosemary focaccia. It was incredible. Jeff was out surfing. Brinley had made granola bars earlier (which I've been making ever since), and she broke one up and served it to me with vanilla yogurt and strawberries. Amy and Eric came over and hung out. The best thing about seeing old friends (OK, I know I'd only been away for two months, but a lot had happened in that time) is the ease of it, like you never left. It felt like I just happened to be over at Jeff and Brinley's that morning.

I got to Landfall in time to hang out for a little bit with Lindsey and the girls before we took our places. Everything was beautiful and sweet, and when they knelt for communion with their backs to us, we could see the bottom of Jeremy's shoes which said "Lucky" on the left and "Me" on the right.

At dinner, I sat with Elizabeth and Lindsay (yes, we are overrun with Lindsay/Lindsey/Lyndsay in that group, but at least they have different spellings), and again it was like old times, giggling about boys and getting excited about Elizabeth's applications to law school and feeding off each other's sweetness and care. The cake was the best wedding cake I've had, the speeches were precious and touching, the dancing was wild, and the whole thing made me see, on the fourth time, why it is that weddings are so great.

It's so not about lovey-dovey romantic mess, like I must have thought it was. Weddings celebrate love in general, and every type of love is present there. You have people who watched the bride and groom grow up, little kids who look up to them, new friends, old friends, neighbors, coworkers, every type of family, church friends, school friends, those who babysat for them and those whom they have babysat. I saw that very clearly at the Moore wedding, not that I didn't at the others. I saw how much Lindsey's coworkers love her. I saw how much her parents love her. Jeremy, great as he is, he's just icing, and that's as it should be.

I stayed with Megan, who was wearing almost exactly the dress I had thought about wearing, and slept hard and woke up and had salted caramel something at Starbucks because they were out of pumpkin spice and went to Pine Valley United Methodist for their 50th anniversary service and lunch, and I looked at what they were putting in the time capsule and hugged all the youth and ate a pot-luck lunch and listened to how all the couples at my table met.

Then I went to the Guppies' house. Baby Jack was asleep, and I had a good visit with Chris and Brian. When it was time to leave, I had to think hard of how much I loved seminary, which I really did and still do, but man, was it hard to tear myself away.

Thank you, Jeremy and Lindsey and everyone involved in the wedding, Jeff and Brinley and everyone from Pine Valley, Chris and Brian and everyone else I got to see in Wilmington, thank you, thank you, thank you Wilmington itself for drawing all these fine people, for being the place where we met and lived and shared and grew, for being the place where I finally started to get it.

Movies & Me

During summer language school, the absence of one or two people can make a big difference. We had two people go out of town and several others occupied with out-of-town guests, so this weekend has been pretty laid back. Add the fact that we have no Hebrew class Monday or Tuesday, and you have a recipe for one of those aimless Saturdays in which the to-do list goes out the window. I went to a matinee of Friends with Benefits at lunchtime with friends, then I was going to Wal-Mart and one of them wanted to go with me. Listening to Disney songs in the car made her want to watch Enchanted, which I'd never seen, so I joined her. Then we went to a housewarming party and then watched the Sex and the City movie.

The evening before, we had watched Keeping the Faith. I don't know if I've watched that many movies in that short of a time span since John and Dad and I hunkered down for a Planet of the Apes marathon many years ago. (They cycled around and showed the first one again at the end. Pretty clever, considering the way they go.) These were all good movies, some surprisingly so, but my head and heart were spinning--in opposite directions--because they all had to do with love, and they all had very different messages about it.

*SPOILER ALERT!* Read no further if you're not interested in learning some key plot points of these movies.

In Keeping the Faith, Rabbi Ben Stiller and Catholic priest Edward Norton both get the hots for their childhood friend, Jenna Elfman from Dharma & Greg, who comes back to town after years away. She gets with Stiller, and Norton takes it hard but ends up happy. Aww! A story in which a main character is okay without a love interest! But that character has to be a priest. Grumble. Also, Stiller is supposed to be accountable to his congregation, and religious leaders should have very high standards for all behavior. This is addressed, but briefly and after the fact. I hadn't watched it since long before this round of seminary-thinking, and it was extremely different from this new perspective. When I said, "This is really funny from a seminarian's point of view," meaning funny-odd, my friend Aaron laughed and said, "News flash: A lot of things are funny from a seminarian's point of view."

In Friends with Benefits, Justin Timberlake (surprisingly good actor!) and Mila Kunis decide to have a lot of sex with no strings attached. It goes really well, and once they get tired of each other, they happily go their separate ways. HA! No, actually they hurt each other really badly and never want to be in communication again. What? Wrong again? You mean their plan works for a while, then their feelings get in the way and they fight, then they realize they're meant for each other? But romantic comedies never go that way! This is the point where I started to feel that head-heart counterspin, rolling my eyes at the cliches but also feeling comforted by the predictability, and hurting over the wrongness of the worldly lessons but feeling the pull of their indulgent non-logic. I really enjoyed the script and characters and actors, and the credit sequence was sweet, but how many times can you be told the same lies and like it? Especially when the lies are mixed with truth. Scary stuff. Also, Jenna Elfman was in it as J-Tim's sister, and he called her Annie Banannie. In Keeping the Faith, she was Anna Banana.

Enchanted had way fewer layers than any of the others, and less material that I rejected, and more singing and animals, and more cliches. A smooth, easy ride. He's a divorce lawyer? Obviously, that means he's jaded about love and the girl is going to un-jade him. They both have other love interests? 8 times out of 10, those two end up together too. A perfect square. After the other two movies, I was happy to watch something so simple, but because I had just watched them, it was anything but. It just presented another not-entirely-true, not-entirely-false point of view.

Sex and the City was by far the most confusing of the four for me, possibly because it was the last of the weekend. They did a great job not giving away too much in the previews, which made the plot twist an actual twist: Big doesn't show up to the wedding. Then he does, but by that time Carrie is so mad it's off. Both of them, and potentially a few others, are to blame, which is realistic and nice. Also, Steve cheats on Miranda, and Miranda leaves, but they end up back together. That's the part that really blew my mind. I always thought cheating is the end, but Steve said something that made me use all my mildest monosyllables of surprise: "Geez. Whoa. Man," and the like. He said he knew he broke a vow, but what about all those other vows? The ones they both made? For better or for worse? That surely qualifies as "worse." Again, responsibility is spread among multiple parties, and nothing is clean cut. Samantha leaves Smith because she's been with him for 5 years but she's been with herself for 49, "and that's the relationship I need to work on," she said. Mostly because she wanted to get with other guys. Especially in light of the Steve-and-Miranda storyline, that was a doozy. I heart Smith and hate that she left him, but isn't it better to leave someone than to cheat if the temptation is really strong and you don't trust yourself? If those are the only two options, though, I'd say you need to find some other options, such as STAY WITH THE PERSON YOU'RE COMMITTED TO AND DON'T CHEAT. In Samantha's case, to be clear, they're not married. Oh, and Carrie goes back to Big at the end, which I had mixed feelings about but it's a movie. In Friends with Benefits and this one, there was a point near the end when I wanted it to end, when they were apart and heartbroken, post-mistakes. I know people don't go to the movies to get a dose of reality, but sometimes I crave one. "And they were both miserable for a while and never saw each other again. The end." But I suppose we get enough of that outside the theater.

The whole shebang threw me off, not that my thoughts on love-n-such were super-well-developed to start with. I appreciate the opportunity to think in different ways about it, and all of the movies were good as entertainment, just not as lessons, I guess. Some parts were good lessons but hard ones, such as forgiveness. I'm very blessed to have people to watch with, and a place to watch, and the leisure time necessary to watch 4 movies in about 26 hours. The best part is that I know where to look to (re-)learn the truth about love. So the movies, when it comes down to it, for all my verbosity and anxiety and analysis and attention, they're just for fun. A place for everything, and everything in its place.