Great Big Hearts Full of Love

Last night I went to a wedding.

You know those weddings where you can't help but be cynical? Those weddings where a perfectly respectable woman dresses up like a meringue and a kind man nervously makes crass comments about his own chains and freedom? And around the bar usually well meaning friends take bets on duration?

This wasn't one of those weddings.

Everyone loves this bride and groom so much. So much! These two people are so universally treasured that the event had an epic feel. We have worked with these people for eons and we watched as they met and worked together and avoided each other and wouldn't admit their attraction. I sat and calmed her as she waited days for him to arrange a time to talk it over after her first drunken admission of love. She was convinced he just wanted to let her down easy. Instead, he said yeah, me too, and the rest is history. A long hard slog for the both of them . . . to tear down each others’ scars (huge, big scars in them both) and trust and negotiate and learn and love. I have learned a lot watching them. They would get to a cliff and climb it. And then they would get to another cliff and climb it. One at a time. As honestly as they could.

And last night I watched these two beloved friends of mine, flanked by her children, take each other's hands and just delight in each other. After everything they have come through. After every hard turning point where it looked like he wasn't going to come along, where they were both scared enough to quit. Here they stood, finally fully comfortable, finally admitting it worked, finally collapsing into each other, relieved, with the promise of giving it forever.

He was positively giddy over his ring (tungsten carbide, don't you know) and she made a disbelieving face whenever he called her his wife. Her daughter led a band of sun-dressed little girls in circles around the boathouse. Her son, white shirt untucked and half unbuttoned, covered in dirt, arrived triumphantly with a jar full of crawdads from the creek. By the end of the evening, the guests were sticky in lobster slime, corn butter and heat. Drunk on champagne and glistening, we threw our arms around each other and posed for endlessly blurry digital pictures.

Old friends were there . . . Cookie and Eivind and Jay and Chad and Kristi and Teetor and Scotty and Floyd . . . all who have left and all who felt like second skin when I saw them again. These wonderful people I have loved for so long . . . all back to celebrate the most beloved among us.

It was great.

It was a great wedding. And great weddings, you know, they give you some hope.

Hope that love does indeed endure it.

And not just romantic love -- but sister love and brother love and friend and colleague love. And love that you feel when you see little strangers dig around in mud, and whole families laughing, and proud caterers heaping plates full of food, and old friends.

God damn, it's ok, that.