A Pathetic Attempt To Talk About A Wedding

You know, I've been pondering for hours about how to write about this past weekend and I really don't know how to do it. 
It was just such a remarkable event. Yes, it was a wedding and the bride was beautiful and darling and as bursting with the juices of life as her young, handsome groom and there were people there from all over the globe to celebrate them and their beginning moments as a married couple and it was held in the most absolutely gorgeous of settings and there was love abounding and there was humor and laughter and food and drink and there were connections made and remade and there were bonfires of such epic proportions that I felt the blessings of every druid god imaginable

(Please click on this to get some scale of the size of that fire)

and, well, there was every element of a grand celebration of marriage you could possibly want, up to and including two roasted pigs, a pie table, and babies and kids shaking it on the dance floor. 

There were blooming azaleas and daffodils and iris and the grand, great live oaks spreading their branches over it all, bestowing blessings. There was music and there were a few perfect speeches but not too many and a bus to take us to and from the hotel and last night on the way home after the final event, almost everyone on the bus fell asleep and I watched the miles of not-yet leafed pecan trees flowing by as rain began to gently fall and I felt as if we were driving through the land of dreamy dreams, as Ellen Gilchrist said once in her own inimitable way, and a woman's voice split the quiet darkness of the bus and she said, "Have we been traveling for days? Seriously? Have we entered a parallel universe?"

So it was like that. 

But here's the thing that kept bumping up against me and making me cry- the history. 

Look- if you're going to love someone when you're a young girl just figuring shit out in the world, you couldn't do better than a man like the one I went to prom with in 1972 because he turned out to be one of the most incredibly loving people in the universe who married one of the most incredibly loving women in the universe and to be part of their tribe all of these years later is simply an astounding gift. 

That's all. That's all I can say about it. The whole weekend was an astounding gift to everyone who was there and I am completely cognizant of that, being one of them. I am completely grateful. I knew it was going to be something like that and that's why I went, as difficult as it was, and I had moments where I felt as if I was meeting family for the first time, moments where I felt as if I was seventeen again, moments where I felt as if I was the deserved honored crone, moments where I just felt happy. 

I truly think that in this life there is absolutely nothing more important than the ties that bind us. They make us feel secure as the planet hurtles through space and as we hurtle through this short lifetime. They make us feel secure and sometimes ecstatic and sometimes they allow us to see, at least a little bit, from a more definite and magnified perspective of these short lives we get. 

And that's how it was.

And when we got home, it was time to hunt Easter Eggs and my own grandchildren were happy to see me and I, with my new perspective, was even more happy than usual to see them. 

And Hank

 and Mark, our dear friend (one of the beloved ties who bind us, yes) and who always comes for Easter

came over and there was an egg hunt and breakfast burritos and deviled eggs and Mr. Moon left to go grouper fishing with a  very, very old friend of his and now I am here alone, at home. I've gone off, I've come back. I've tidied and am doing laundry and watered plants and swept porches and the dogwoods and Bradford pears are blooming and the cardinals are still coming to the feeder and I'm sitting on my back porch, all the doors and windows open in my house and I am wondering if I have been on this bus forever. I am wondering if I have entered a parallel universe. 

Obviously, a parallel universe which does not allow me to align my text on the left side after inserting those pictures. 

Well. One of the great mysteries of life. 

And in less than two weeks. we shall be at Jessie and Vergil's wedding. 

How may times do I get to say this? 

I am one of the luckiest women in the world.

Congratulations, Calder and Victoria. You're in the tribe and thus, will always have the arms of love to fall back on. 

So much love and call me if you ever need me...Ms. Moon