Many Things Matrimonial

This is where I'm going to be over the weekend:



I am going to Maryland because one of our high school friends is getting married. When I learned that she was getting married I had a minor freak-out because this was the girl I edited the newspaper and yearbook with, and just who the hell said she could go off and get married before I did?

All through middle and high school this friend and I wrote center-justified poems about love and hearts and angels and midnight skies and golden forevers.

We were pretty similar: we were among the first girls to get freakishly tall, we both lusted after older boys who didn't know our names, we were both convinced that My So-Called Life was the best television show of all time, and, for our very first writing assignment in AP English, we both turned in pieces titled "The Eternal Night." Well, except mine was titled in French, because I thought I was clever.

The friend was the second person I told after I lost my virginity. She had the best note-folding technique of all time. She was a fine gossiper. She was one of the first of us to get a car, which she called The Vibe. If you took it over fifty-five miles per hour, the entire dashboard rumbled as if it were about to crack clean off. I was in that car the day she hit the curb at the East Aurora Pizza Hut.

I guess I never thought this friend would be one of the first to get married. Somehow, she seemed above all that. She seemed too artsy, too focused, too anti-normalcy for the institution. I guess I always thought I'd go first.

I've been unable to keep myself from thinking about love and marriage and weddings for the last few days. There's the upcoming trip to Maryland, and there's also this: I just spent three hours mixing a CD of possible first-dance songs for Becky's summer wedding. I've been listening to the best love songs I could dig up. I've been doing some thinking and daydreaming.

The last time I did this much thinking and daydreaming about weddings was on the drive to New York after I packed up and left Minnesota. I'd done that drive four times already in two months. I was bored with it. I had time to kill. So I allowed myself some wandering thoughts.

I planned my wedding. Actually, I planned a lot of weddings. There was a full-fledged wedding scenario to go along with every man I've loved or liked an awful lot.

I had the music, the decor, the location, the bridesmaid dresses, the flowers, the wedding party, the church readings, the toasts, the dances, and even my dress picked out for each wedding. And they were all different. Seriously, I had a lot of time to kill. And it didn't seem fair to dream up Generic Wedding when things would be so, so different if I married this beloved boy instead of that beloved boy.

One of the scenarios featured a big Catholic church, a chocolate truffle hors d'oeuvres hour, champagne, groomsmen who spent their pre-wedding hours eating Funyuns and discussing that time they locked one of the younger ones in the closet when he was wearing one sparkly glove. My husband and I would have danced our first dance to his favorite song—"When You Say Nothing At All" by Alison Krause and Union Station—or "Feels Like Home" by Chantal Kreviazuk.

Another scenario would have featured a lot of choreographed Michael Jackson dance routines from the groom and his groomsmen. Amy would've toasted and thanked the groom for doing her hair that one time.

Yet another scenario would've featured a reading from Professor Girl. I'd ask her to read a poem or say some beautiful things. She would get real drunk at the reception and she would do the hair-spin dance to some ABBA or Bruce Springsteen song we'd play for her. Things would probably be lit on fire. By the groom.

Another scenario would've had Katy banned from speech-making of any kind, lest she bring up that time she pinched the groom's nipple. This one would be expensive, and I would have the dress to end all dresses. Everything would be shiny. There would be a lot of crystal, a lot of silver, a lot of hot boys for my friends to hit on. Oh, and the cake.

I could go on forever. During a ride that turns out to be nineteen hours long, a girl has a lot of time to plan her wedding. She has a lot of time to consider her grooms, her choices, her wants, the way she hopes things to be.

But this weekend isn't about me or my fantasy wedding. It's about the next high school friend who is growing up, going off, stepping into her new life. It's about me spending the five hour trip to Maryland eating brownies and wondering where the time has gone. Where has it gone?