6.25.2006

symmetry and motion

my heather went & got married.

earlier in the day we had been in the room karen&i shared in our calistoga guest house, the three of us: heather, karen, and i. the dynamic trio. heather's back was to me but i could see her face reflected in the dressertop mirror as she did her makeup. karen was on the couch typing her part of our dinner toast into her laptop. i was sprawling on the bed feeling a little lazy and a little misty and thinking how lovely it all was and then a thought flashed. "it will never be like this again." and i started crying and at first i was doing it silently so as not to trouble them and then i thought...that's crazy, this is family. so i went over and put my arms around heather and cried and babbled incoherently a little, about how beautiful she looked, about how happy for her i was. and i was.

angwin was high-90's and we wedding party stood outside in our black dresses but it was less oppressive than i worried it would be. there was some shade, there were parasols. and we were there for a damn good reason. everything that could have gone wrong...didn't. even the microphone behaved for k's&my toast...though not so much at other times. some people told me i made them cry and there's a symmetry to that, i suppose.

now i am tired and a bit sad but in a forward-moving life-is-changing kind of way. changes are hard, because when something new comes down the road, inevitably something old is lost. not people, but a dynamic maybe. things will never be quite the same again...and you know? things were pretty good. even if i didn't always see how good they were. let that be a lesson to me, i guess.

i am moving on saturday.
time to pack.

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written on the occasion of my best friend's wedding.
(delivered as part of my toast)

heather, recently i remembered that i used to call you "sugarbeet." i guess now i have to change that to "mrs. sugarbeet." but remembering that nickname made me think about how special our friendship has been to me. without you, i wouldn't even be the person i am today. in recent years i've shared all of my important moments with you...and most of my unimportant ones, too. i could stand up here talking all night about how much i love you, and why, and i still wouldn't be close to telling the whole story. so i'll just say this: a very few times in life, if you're lucky, someone comes along who has the power to change your heart. for me, you are that person.