Wedding Shower

My daughter recently married their high school sweetheart in the back yard of our house.  In the months leading up to the wedding, while the couple contemplated various venue options, it surprised me how many issues Isabel had to grapple with in an attempt to make sure each of their wedding guests would feel safe and comfortable at the wedding.  It was Isabel’s number one priority, which caused my mama bear pride to swell to the size of Mars.  But it was also difficult - and a bit fascinating - to watch my beautiful child agonize over this.   

When Shane and I got married 27 years ago, I didn’t have nearly as much to grapple with.  Although, in looking back, I really could have agonized just a tad more than I did.  I was 23 years old at the time, and I had no idea how to plan a wedding.  And we didn’t yet have resources like google or Youtube to point out every possible detail that ever existed about any kind of wedding a person could ever think of.     

I was also a pretty self-centered kid.  I’m afraid I just didn’t think about other people all that much.  When Shane and I selected our lovely little wedding invitations, I was delighted by the delicate silver writing and tiny pink roses embossed into the paper.  But I honestly wondered what the R.S.V.P.s were even for.      

For our venue, I called the Parks and Recreation department and reserved a spot in one of our local parks, where a creek trickled by and willow trees swayed, dappling in the sunlight overhead.  Then I selected a wedding cake out of a catalog at Albertsons, and scheduled to have it delivered to the park on our wedding day.  Oh, and I bought myself a dress, and told my maid-of-honor to pick one out for herself as well.  That was it.  That was all I did for our wedding.  

Thankfully, Shane’s mom purchased and brought some decorations to the park.  My mom paid for a band to play music during our reception.  And I’m not exactly sure who rented the tables and chairs and tent (I think it might have been Shane’s best man).  

If I had considered my guests at all, I might have done things differently.  I might have, for example, made sure every guest had a chair to sit in.  I might have made a back-up plan in case it rained (thankfully it stopped raining right before our wedding ceremony).  And I might have had more to eat than just cake.     

But hey, hindsight is 20/20.  

Isabel, on the other hand, did things very differently than I did.  And they are 20 years old (three years younger than I was when I got married).  Isabel not only considered every physical detail for each wedding guest (every person would have a chair, a spot at a table, plenty to eat and drink, etc).  They also considered every possible thing that might go wrong.  Starting with the pronouns.  

The only time in a young person’s life when they have to get both their entire family, and the entire family of their fiancé, together with all of their closest friends, is at their wedding.  It is one of those rare social occasions during which vastly different kinds of people - people for whom the bride and groom both care a great deal - come together and co-mingle.  Perhaps this is why getting married has made it onto the list of top ten most stressful events in a person’s life.          

So how does a person make sure the correct pronouns are used, at all times, for each and every guest at a wedding?  I watched my thoughtful and considerate child agonize over this for months.  We even considered pronoun name tags for a moment, although Isabel quickly dismissed this (I think they just needed to see that I was willing to support the idea).

In spite of my constant reassurances that no one in our family knowingly discriminates against anyone, I still had to confess that I honestly don’t know whether or not everyone in my family is educated in such matters.  We still have some family members who, for example, might not even realize that sexual orientation and gender identity are two separate things (two separate things that have nothing what-so-ever to do with each other), let alone that there is specific language to be used in each case.  

Isabel has their own complicated history with these things (but I will let them tell you about that should they ever care to).  I will just say that Shane and I were really quite surprised when Isabel started dating a boy.  But not nearly as shocked as we were when Isabel decided to be the bride, and wear the big, princess dress and everything.     

Now, Isabel does present as female.  Some of the time anyway.  Their pronouns are “she” and “they.”  And Isabel did, in the end, end up marrying a boy.  The groom’s pronouns are “he” and “him.”  But their own situation is more complicated than that.  And the vast majority of the couple’s friends have a more complicated situation as well.

Add to this the fact that there is some alcoholism in our families, and a bride may as well immediately drop kick any illusion of control at a wedding.  But I couldn’t really tell Isabel that.  They had to eventually come to this conclusion on their own.  And, in the end, they did, and we all decided that all we could really do was provide a safe and loving environment, and hope for the best.  

Although, to be honest, I did find myself memorizing the pronouns of each wedding guest, and calling various family members to alert them to the situation.  And Shane and I quizzed each other.  Like, a lot.  

“The ‘sir of honor’ is a…?” one would ask the other.

“A THEY?” the other would answer.

“Nope.”

“Oh, a… a HE?”

“Very good!  And the ‘best man’ is a…?”

And so on.  Hey, changing one’s language is hard.  Even Shane and I still struggle with it sometimes, and we have been practicing it for a long time.    

The other thing Isabel had to grapple with in relation to their wedding, was what to do with their little brother, Cale.  Isabel decided right away that Cale had to be there for the wedding (which touched my heart).  But with this being the case, there were two primary concerns. 

First, Cale is a wandering risk.  Second, Cale (who is nineteen year old now) doesn’t always keep his clothes on.  

Cale doesn’t necessarily try to run away.  He doesn’t actively check doors or gates or windows for access to the outside world.  But if he does happen to notice the effortless swing of a door or a gate as people walk in and out of it, he might just “go for a walk.”  This is how he thinks about it, I have no doubt.  The problem is that once Cale turns a corner, he is lost and can’t find his way back home again.  And he can’t talk.  So he can’t communicate about who he is or where he belongs.    

This has happened three times now.  The first time it happened, one of the kids left the side gate open in the back yard while getting a bike out, and I just didn’t realize it.  Cale had never tried to leave the house before, so I honestly don’t know how much time went by before I realized he was gone - two minutes, five minutes, ten minutes - but as soon as I realized it I called 911.

Apparently, Cale found his way to a neighbor’s house a couple of blocks away.  He opened her sliding glass door, walked right into her house, and made his way to her kitchen.  She got up from her chair and followed him, asking who he was and if she could help him with something, to which I’m sure he replied, “Deee youuuu,” in his sing song voice.  Cale then opened up her refrigerator and helped himself to some of her juice.  Then he walked back to the sliding glass door and left the house.

This neighbor, being a sensitive (and thankfully unarmed) person, could tell that something was very wrong with this situation.  So she followed Cale out the door and down the block, while dialing the police.  She stayed near him until the police picked him up in an Albertsons parking lot about a mile away from our house.  I know all of this because this same neighbor came by our house the following day to make sure that everything had turned out all right for Cale.  I could feel tears of gratitude in my eyes as she explained what had happened, and I felt the urge to hug her, but I restrained myself and instead just thanked her over and over again.

The other two times Cale got out, he left through the front door.  It is frightening how easily something like this can happen in a family (when I think Shane has locked the door, Shane thinks Alden has locked the door, Alden thinks Isabel has locked the door, Isabel thinks I have locked the door, and so forth).  Regardless of who left the door unlocked, Cale took the opportunity to to go for a walk.  We all realized it very quickly.  But sometimes Cale walks off really fast, and he disappeared before we could tell which way he had gone.

Our dog, Gus, found Cale that time, a few blocks away from our house, and, I’m sure, started to guide him home.  However, Cale and Gus both smelled food, so they took a detour into a neighbors’ back yard.  These neighbors were barbecuing with a bunch of their friends.  And, apparently, it took everyone awhile to figure out that this blond kid and the black dog, who had by that point helped themselves to their food, didn’t actually belong with anyone at the barbecue.  These neighbors got my number off of Gus’s dog tag and called me.

The third time Cale got out - same situation with the door (although, after this one, no one at our house has ever forgotten to lock the door again) - he walked almost five miles on a 100 degree day before the police found him approaching a river.  He had crossed the traffic on a highway (and Cale has no safety awareness).  When the police picked him up, the police officer handed Cale a gallon jug of water.  Cale drank half of the gallon before he stopped drinking.  

After that, we built a new fence around our back yard (it is really more like a wall made of wood), and we put locks on both side gates.  We also put a child proof (and often adult proof) lock on the front door.  And no one that lives at our house has ever forgotten to lock that door again.           

Naturally, Isabel was a bit nervous to have their wedding in a public place that Cale could easily wander away from.  I think this was the main reason they ultimately decided to have the wedding in our back yard.  It is a safe and comfortable place for Cale.  The only problem with having the wedding at our house was the fact that, when Cale is at home, he has a tendency to take off his clothes and try to get into our hot tub. 

In the end, Isabel decided that Cale’s safety was more important.  But they did communicate their fear, over and over again, that Cale might get naked during the wedding.  At one point, for example, I bought some beautiful bobbing flower lights to float on the surface water in the hot tub during the wedding.  But Isabel quickly decided that having the lid off the hot tub during the wedding would only encourage Cale to pull off his suit and climb into the water.  So we left the lid on the hot tub during the wedding, and even put heavy pots of flowers on top.

The wedding day itself was a beautiful day.  We couldn’t have asked for better weather, or for a more perfect evening.  The mid September cool had just started to yellow the leaves on all the trees.  The fall flowers I had spent the summer planting in my garden and around the yard had grown, budded, and eventually bloomed, one by one, into the wide bursts of orange and red and pink and yellow that lined the walkways and lawn.    

Sunflowers taller than the groom himself drooped big yellow heads over the grass.  Lights draped overhead.  The wedding arch that I had constructed out of branches from both our yard and from Flathead Lake, rose and curved and sparkled with tiny twinkle lights.     

The groom, and later the bride, walked down the isle to the song (the instrumental) that opens the movie Little Miss Sunshine.  Isabel’s big brother, Alden, who came home on leave from the Marines to be here for the wedding, walked down the isle with Cale.  The boys both wore blue suits that matched the color of their eyes.  And Cale, with Alden’s help, played the role of flower boy.  With two fingers, Cale picked one tiny petal at a time out of his little basket, and then, with a stiff, straight arm, dropped it onto the grass.   

Isabel came down the isle moments later, arm in arm with their dad, Shane, with tears in their eyes and a bright, beaming smile on their face.  

During the reception, as the sun was setting and the glow from all the twinkle lights grew brighter and brighter, all the guests sat together and chatted and ate and laughed.  Everyone seemed like they felt safe and comfortable.  The food was amazing.  The speeches were even better.  And, the whole time, Cale paced around the yard in circles.  This is his preferred activity when he can’t sit in the hot tub and pour water.

Cale didn’t get naked one time all evening.  Although he did, I found out afterwards, pull down his pants and start peeing in one of the bushes.  One of his cousins stopped him right away and talked him in to pulling up his pants, and then walked him to the bathroom to finish the job. 

I didn’t think anyone had actually seen this.  But later, at a gathering of Isabel’s friends, I found out that practically everyone saw.  When I later told my Mom about this, even she had seen Cale peeing in the bush at the wedding.  “Well, honey,” she said, “Its hard not to notice two little white buns peeking out from under a dark blue suit.”