I will have you know that I am a precursor – a harbinger of our new, cool global modern social order. I remember very clearly: when I was an adolescent and I realized that my mother had a driver’s license – which they would not let ME have – which made said mother responsible to drive me wherever I wanted to go. Ethically, morally, legally, eternally responsible. Because she could drive and I couldn’t. I trust I have made my point.
And I can remember the look on her face as I was writhing in indignation: she wouldn’t take me just these two places. TWO LOUSY PLACES. Okay, they might have been on polar opposites ends of town – what did I know from WHERE things were? All you had to know in my position is that a car could get you there, and I wanted to go there, and she had to take me. Because – I already told you why.
Did she have her own things to do with that time and gas? Maybe. How should I know? That wasn’t the point. I NEEDED to go. It was imPORtant. So – I think you get it.
It was not till later in life that I began to understand my mother. And at that point, I also understood my children, who hadn’t yet begun to understand their own mother. And it’s been fun, I will tell you, watching them grow – that light of sudden understanding and horror coming into their faces as they do happen to figure things out – and realize what little pains they have been all their lives. Because they are suddenly finding that they, themselves, are now the ones with the licenses.
So one day this summer, I got a call from Murphy —
—at Pixar, telling me about these wonderful friends he has who were getting married and trying to be intelligent and frugal about doing it, and how they couldn’t find any place for their reception so he had offered our back yard. “Later, ” he told me sheepishly, “I thought – hmmm, maybe I should have called to ask Mom before I offered.”
The incipient groom, the day before the wedding, here to set the stage, being instructed by the Landlord.
My first reaction: “You want me to host a reception in our back yard three weeks before YOUR wedding? Are you nuts?”
His friends actually were wonderful and cute and – “They’d have to take the yard just the way it is,” I said. But of course, there was more to it than that. The yard had suffered with the building last year, and as we walked through it, we saw a whole lot of what my friend Jeanene would see as natural pharmaceuticals but which actually looked pretty much like weeds. So we made the proposal: Murphy and the friends had to do the weeding and the heavy lifting, and the reception was on.
Andy’s sister, the light and kitchen coordinator.
I didn’t really know anybody, so I was shooting everybody. Christina’s brother, here to help set up.
Notice how we’re just sitting back and letting the kids do all the work?
This was more than my little son had reckoned on. “But the yard looks fine,” he said. “Let’s clean off all the cobwebs on the back porch and get the old lawn furniture out of the way and pull all those weeds over there and clear out those dead branches the storm brought down and buy some wood chips and spread them and get some flagstones for this area,” his father answered.
And that was Murphy’s first lesson in being a property owner.
Both families, working away –
Getting out our big green pavilion tent. Used once in about eight years – it’s really easy to set up.
Really easy.
If you read the instructions.
And have about twelve arms. They spent about half an hour just trying to fit the pieces together.
Pieces together, skin on – it’s almost a tent. But where are the workers?
UNDER it. Lifting from the inside.
Ta-DAA!
Success.
Christina, the bride, and Andy’s sister.
I had qualms about children running wild in the yard, falling off the deck (which we ended up blocking off) into the river, falling out of trees and breaking arms – and neighbors showing up in the yard with pitch forks, riled by loud music – all the things you tend to worry about when you’re not sure your homeowner’s insurance will actually pay off. But none of that happened. Or, I should say, none of that happened.
The night of. A wonderful spread and plenty of child thievery.
And Landlord thievery.
The wonderful photographer who teaches French at the university and shoots with a really big lens. After he came, I put away my camera and let the pro cover the real stuff.
Well, after a minute. Happy, pretty little bride!
Mom and brothers of the bride.
Old Fashioned root bear and chatting in the gloaming. Andy’s mama.
Kitchen crew.
Through which the Landlord must wander with his dinner dishes.
The kids were wonderful. The family was wonderful. The tiny little lime cupcakes were WONDERFUL. The dance floor, which did NOT kill the grass, was fun. The music was quiet and delightful – as were the children who spent the night dancing on it. The kitchen crew (all family) was charming. Except for the dogs, who had to stay in the living room, locked into their wire crates, howling all evening log – everything was working out just lovelily . . .
Until the storm hit. They’d been talking about some strong winds hitting us, maybe late at night. But they talk about rain and snow and all kinds of stuff and rarely does any of it actually reach us down in our valley. But at about eight thirty that night, just as the sun set, there was a shift in the air. I felt it in the house and found myself running outside with my trash bag.
There was a sudden roaring –
The wedding lights began to jump up and down as the trees they hung from started whipping in a wave of wind that came across the river all in a rush. People dashed for the tent, holding onto the poles for dear life. Table clothes rose like sails spilling brown bottles of Old Fashioned Root Beer and scattering paper plates. Confusion everywhere – children screaming delightedly. People diving after napkins. Chairs falling over.
The next wave was more fierce. The family and guests pulled the tent down – and our river trees, dark, violent shadows against a black and angry sky and twice as tall as the house, began to whip around like loose hair in a commercial dryer. This time, I took those trees seriously. “Children – to me, to me!” I was yelling, gathering them all onto the little dance floor. A wad of shingles came flying off the house and crashed onto the deck, inches from one of the guests. I measured those tree trunks with one eye closed and became a sheep dog, driving all the kids back into the house.
All of the people were gleefully pitching in – hauling chairs and tables and linens and pieces of dance floor off to the driveway as branches came crashing down on to the lawn around them. And I had a living room full of little girls in puffy dresses, little boys in button-down shirts. “Do any of you have daughters who’ve been to girls’ camp and know some games?” I asked the buzzing kitchen. I was in sub-suds up to my elbows, washing crystal bowls.
“Where are the children?” someone asked. My own incipient daughter-in-law was at my elbow. “Living room,” I said, and she was off. She spent the next forty minutes keeping them all busy while the dogs, delighted to find themselves with something to bark at, drowned in a sea of children.
Then it was all put away and the guests were wandering off. The winds calmed down, enough for some happy chatting in the shadows. Cars were loaded with crystal and silver trays and left over goodies packed into boxes. It was only then, as the family lingered, that I found out something wonderful: the mother of the groom introduced herself and said we had friends in common. But we had more than that. It turned out that one of my favorite people from my undergrad years was her brother and that his own daughters had been in my backyard all that evening without my knowing it.
So here I was, at the end of the most exciting party we’d ever had – and here came the past, weaving right in with the present in the most amazing way. I couldn’t help but thing, what if – thirty five years ago when we were just kids – somebody had said to us, “You (meaning me) will someday have his (meaning John’s) nephew’s wedding in your own backyard – .“ Which would told me that I’d live another thirty five years, and get married and have my own back yard and my own kids who would be friends with his nephew – more stuff than I even knew how to dream about.
Yeah. These two could have a great time together in a vacuum.
Man, you just never know what you’re going to find out, thirty five years from now.