This is triple-witching day in my little universe: a wedding, a reunion with the people I grew up with, and Mother’s Day.
At 5 PM this evening, my nephew and his fiancee are getting married.
They met at work, have known each other a very long time, have lived together for years, even bought their house together. They are sensible young adults with a wide circle of friends and an extended local family network, important for when they start having kids.
Fine young people, both of them, and I certainly wish them well.
On the other hand, weddings are a challenge. For one thing, one has to dress, and I really hate dressing up. In fact, I hate anything more formal than chinos and collared shirts, or their equivalent.
Another awful thing about weddings is the need to make social chit-chat. I’ve heard Queen Elizabeth II is a master of this, and that’s one of the things about her I admire. I’d rather have dental work or outpatient surgery than participate in meaningless conversation. It seems a waste of the millions of years of evolution that gave us the power of reason and speech.
About Mother’s Day: I loathe this holiday, so much that my son has learned not to acknowledge it. I know very few people who really love their mothers, except for very young children.
“Motherhood” gets painted with a Victorian brush in the United States. It doesn’t celebrate the woman who is the family’s main wage earner, although heaven knows there are plenty of those. It doesn’t celebrate the pioneer or the warrior: how many Hallmark cards pay tribute to the mothers who are serving in Iraq?
Mother’s Day: curse the ones that invented it.
As for getting together with the extended “family”, good grief, that’s become an institutional joke in the United States, particularly intolerable if you’re in a big room with no means of escape.
So, I am not a happy person today. I’m trying, believe me, but some experiences are more than the flesh can bear.
Well, maybe it won’t be so bad. The food will be good, the setting sublime in spite of the weather, and they’ll have a good band.
Forgive me, have to go, I’m getting a headache.