Monday, August 06, 2007
afterglow.
i know, but i wasn't ready to talk about it yet.
i realize that the rest of the world has moved on from my wedding, but i still think about it an awful lot. i figure that's my due. it was so unbelievably happy, despite a slightly discordant note at the end when a good friend tore my dress and everyone left at 11:30 (sunday night! what were we thinking?).
the whole thing started out good and got better. we did the 14/48, absorbed love and congratulations from friends old and new (although, for the record, i got a couple seriously dog plays), and then went back to olympia for some relatively restful days. we got sleep, did a few tasks, and generally enjoyed my family and didn't freak out. we drove back up to seattle the thursday before the wedding for a shower, and then it all started.
a few minutes before everyone started going down the aisle, someone--no idea who--asked me if i was ready. and i kind of laughed, because ready just doesn't seem to apply. of course i'm ready, and of course i'm in control of the situation--if i suddenly decided the whole can of corn was a bad idea, i could have walked away. but what got me in the moment was that there simply wasn't a way to make it go slower. or pause. clocks just go forward. the music starts, and then no matter how long you'd like each second to last, it gets over at the same astonishing rate.
there are individual, crystalline memories sort of floating in a happy miasma. the little hole in kaufmann's suit shoulder, the face i made when chris's ring wouldn't go on, how i couldn't wait to kiss him and accidentally started early, how i'd forgotten about the bells i asked everyone to ring during the kiss and i actually thought for half of one of those fleet seconds that it was the sound of us kissing. i was worried that i'd be too wound up about the enormity of the day to really be present--that i'd just be sloppy and teary and would weep from my sheer inability to countenance joy and nostalgia. instead, i smiled through the whole thing. afterwards i worried that maybe it had been too casual, but the feeling of really being there, of a wide wide lens, of superpresence--i think it just bestowed a preternatural calm on messy weepy me. i told this to my dad, including my fear of the casual, and he said, i think the word you want is authentic.
that's kind of a messed up word, but that's what it felt like. like i was there, and it was real. and things were so unexpectedly beautiful--i couldn't believe what we'd pulled off, everything and everyone looked so good . . . it was really as good as i hoped it would be. it was also exhausting, and for the last forty-five minutes of the reception i was that three year old kid who is just too tired and i felt like there was sand in every part of me, but apart from that, wow. it really was blissful.
so was the honeymoon. more later. with pictures. for now, though, i really think that this may be the thousand words that best describes the evening.
i realize that the rest of the world has moved on from my wedding, but i still think about it an awful lot. i figure that's my due. it was so unbelievably happy, despite a slightly discordant note at the end when a good friend tore my dress and everyone left at 11:30 (sunday night! what were we thinking?).
the whole thing started out good and got better. we did the 14/48, absorbed love and congratulations from friends old and new (although, for the record, i got a couple seriously dog plays), and then went back to olympia for some relatively restful days. we got sleep, did a few tasks, and generally enjoyed my family and didn't freak out. we drove back up to seattle the thursday before the wedding for a shower, and then it all started.
a few minutes before everyone started going down the aisle, someone--no idea who--asked me if i was ready. and i kind of laughed, because ready just doesn't seem to apply. of course i'm ready, and of course i'm in control of the situation--if i suddenly decided the whole can of corn was a bad idea, i could have walked away. but what got me in the moment was that there simply wasn't a way to make it go slower. or pause. clocks just go forward. the music starts, and then no matter how long you'd like each second to last, it gets over at the same astonishing rate.
there are individual, crystalline memories sort of floating in a happy miasma. the little hole in kaufmann's suit shoulder, the face i made when chris's ring wouldn't go on, how i couldn't wait to kiss him and accidentally started early, how i'd forgotten about the bells i asked everyone to ring during the kiss and i actually thought for half of one of those fleet seconds that it was the sound of us kissing. i was worried that i'd be too wound up about the enormity of the day to really be present--that i'd just be sloppy and teary and would weep from my sheer inability to countenance joy and nostalgia. instead, i smiled through the whole thing. afterwards i worried that maybe it had been too casual, but the feeling of really being there, of a wide wide lens, of superpresence--i think it just bestowed a preternatural calm on messy weepy me. i told this to my dad, including my fear of the casual, and he said, i think the word you want is authentic.
that's kind of a messed up word, but that's what it felt like. like i was there, and it was real. and things were so unexpectedly beautiful--i couldn't believe what we'd pulled off, everything and everyone looked so good . . . it was really as good as i hoped it would be. it was also exhausting, and for the last forty-five minutes of the reception i was that three year old kid who is just too tired and i felt like there was sand in every part of me, but apart from that, wow. it really was blissful.
so was the honeymoon. more later. with pictures. for now, though, i really think that this may be the thousand words that best describes the evening.
