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.
---------
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.
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.
---------
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.
posted by amy at 4:31 PM
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