We left last Thursday about 4:00 a.m., and saw two deer in
the middle of the city as we were leaving, a not uncommon thing in our city
because of the metro park nearby. There were five of us, plus Hammy, Caleb’s
guide dog, in the van.
We seemed packed more than full, and I wondered how we used
to do it with seven people in the van plus everything we had to take for a
trip. But we made it okay, even over a thirteen-and-a-half-hour drive, and I
thought how it might be the last time so many of us traveled together, as the
kids get older and move farther into their own lives.
The wedding was Saturday. Sarah was one of the attendants
and needed to be at the site early in the morning. Rebecca and Steve each had
seven attendants, and she’d arranged for all the ladies to get together and
have help with hair and make-up. I came a couple hours later to sit in while
Rebecca was getting ready.
It was fun, sitting in the room filled with happy music and ladies
talking and laughing. Rebecca gave me a gift bag with gifts for the mother of
the bride. Smart she is. I think the gifts for the attendants may have included
some cosmetics and jewelry, but mine had candy and snacks. She knows me well.
It took around an hour to do Rebecca’s hair and make-up,
with ladies surrounding her. I thought about my friend Janet W. Ferguson’s most
recent book about a lady who was a wedding planner. She said her goal was to
help a woman feel like a princess for a day, and I felt like that was what was
happening for Rebecca. Then she plopped down on the floor in front of me and
asked if I wanted to check out her hair.
All week we’d kept checking the weather forecast. For a day
at the end of April, we hoped for a nice spring day for an outside wedding. The
forecast was for rain Friday, and temperatures in the 50s for Saturday but
windy. Rebecca said she didn’t mind clouds, as long as it didn’t rain.
Murray said early in the afternoon it rained, but the sun
had come out some after that, and it looked like it was going to be okay for
four-thirty, the time of the wedding.
Our family sat down first, and we kept waiting for more
people to sit down behind us. Finally, Murray went back into the building where
the dinner was going to be, to see what was happening.
It was windy and chilly, and most of the guests had gone
inside. Murray said he heard Audrey, Rebecca’s matron of honor call out boldly,
“Okay, everyone who is not part of the wedding party, go on out and find your
seats.” Sarah said later that she was so glad Audrey was there to help with all
the arrangements.
Things never go perfectly for a wedding, no matter how hard
you work. Rebecca told me they had coolers set up with signs made up for the
different drinks. For kids they had a cooler with a sign that said “Milk and
Juice,” but when they went shopping Friday for last minute things, they
couldn’t find any small bottles of milk. Then, on Saturday morning, at her
hotel breakfast, Audrey snagged several cartons of milk, so the sign was not
inaccurate.
After guests were seated behind us, a few members of the
wedding party started to move out to proceed up the aisle. Then it started to
rain, and then Murray laughed and said, “It’s hailing.” Someone behind us
called, “This is good luck folks.” Mom told me later that she’d always heard if
it rains on your wedding day, you’ll have a happy marriage.
Rebecca and Steve had written vows to each other, and Sarah
told me later that she thought they both sniffled a little. I said I certainly
sniffled. When they were done, Murray told me, “Rebecca looked pretty happy.”
After dinner, Rebecca and Steve had the first dance, and
Murray said it looked amazingly choreographed, starting slow and easy, then
quickly moving to more fast and intricate. Ping-Hwei found an old digital
camera in his room last week, and caught their dance on video. After the dance,
Rebecca asked everyone else to join them on the floor, and I heard Caleb ask
Sarah to dance with him.
A fun surprise at the wedding. We met the granddaughter of
the couple who ran the home in Taiwan where we found Ping-Hwei, Caleb and
Benjamin. She introduced herself to us as the wife of Steve’s best man.
On Sunday, Murray, Ping-Hwei and I went on to Missouri to
visit my mother where she lives in a senior living facility. On Sunday, we
played scrabble with her, which is a fun memory I have with Mom when I was a
kid.
On Monday, we sat with Mom through her activities in the
morning and afternoon, which happened to be bingo both times. I told her we
were good luck for her, because with us there, she won four games.
My brother Rodney came about mid-day. He has a garden, and
I’m constantly telling him he should mail me some of his fresh radishes with
dry ice. When he walked into Mom’s room, he handed me a small sack full of
radishes and said, “I pulled these, cut the stems and cleaned them just this
morning.”
After we left there, we drove by to visit Murray’s brother
Myles, his wife Heather and their daughter Melissa. They had happy little one-year-old
dogs, who gifted me by again and again jumping up and putting their paws on my
lap and kissing me.
With the closeness of our journey, the traveling, time in
the hotel, the wedding, and our visit to Mom and the chance to be with family,
not everything went smoothly, as it never does. But I thought these verses, one
from Rebecca and Steve’s wedding, spoke well. Colossians 3:12-14: “Therefore,
as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with
compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other
and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive
as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds
them all together in perfect unity.