Slice ‘o Life – Page 8

June 25, 2015

Sandpiper Days

Have you ever noticed a group of sandpipers playing in the waves on the beach? They are amazing little creatures, kind of bouncy and hyper and sweet. I could watch them for hours.

The first time I realized that little toddlers resemble sandpipers was in Mexico in February 2010. Our Donna had died just four months earlier and we packed up some swim suits and her surviving baby brother, now a 14 month old toddler, and headed south.

It was a healing vacation. We all napped every day and there was no wifi, so books and magazines and cards were our entertainment. And the ocean, with its waves and its vast nature, just took us in and held us close and whispered in our ears how sorry it was that our girl was gone. The salt of our tears blended with the ocean.

There was joy, too. And gratitude. We had our boy. He needed us, just as Donna had. That trip was an awakening for me in many ways. An introduction, again, to our son, who for so many months had gotten our leftovers.

Fourteen months is just at the cusp of those sandpiper days. He didn’t like the ocean so much, our boy, so he stayed up on the beach and occasionally, though not often, flirted with the waves. He bopped up and down just as the sandpipers were doing. Immediately I saw the connection between my boy and the birds. It was adorable and filling and healing in a different way.

We left Mexico, as all vacations end someday, but those sandpipers stayed with us, bopping up and down our long hallway in our boy’s steps. For months while in that stage, I called him “my little sandpiper.” His energy and joy and swiftness and sweetness matched those ocean birds in every way.

But just as vacations end, so does the toddler stage. Our little sandpiper grew up and those days were forgotten, remembered occasionally when we would visit them at the local zoo.

Now, though, we are in the midst of another sandpiper phase. I love it. I love all of it. Well, most of it. Strangely, our new little sandpiper kind of shape shifts at diaper changing time into a bucking bronco. But, for the most part, these days are sweet, full of that light, bouncy, joyful energy a young toddler brings to your life.

It is a gift, these sandpiper days. I treasure them.

Actual sandpipers do not carry small green cars on the beach.

June 16, 2015

In-Between Weddings

We’re headed to Cincinnati for a wedding later this month and it made me realize that my husband and I are in that phase of life in-between weddings. Most of our close friends and contemporaries sailed on the wedding ship long ago, very few have gotten divorced and re-married, and we’re too young to be heading to the weddings of our children.

We’re in-between weddings. Yes, definitely attending more funerals these days than weddings. I miss them. They are full of hope and cake and Black Eyed Peas blasting from the speakers. In the fourteen years since our own wedding, I’ve heard tale that photo booths and midnight snacks are now de rigueur.

Prepping to go to our friend’s wedding has reminded me of my love/hate relationship to these events. I even experienced that dynamic with my own wedding — a smallish affair for 80 held in an old opera hall in the quaint Galena, Illinois. I loved the actual day, being surrounded by our most cherished friends and family, but all the prep work nearly done me in.

We had an etsy-esque wedding long before etsy even existed. We made our own wedding invitations that involved needles, thread and linoleum block printing, we served pie instead of cake, and our centerpieces were stainless steel trays I found on sale at Target filled with grass grown from seeds. It was really very lovely.

But I was uncomfortable being a bride. I could not figure out the whole dress thing and ended up having one sewn for me that I sort of liked well enough. Being the focus of attention was kind of surreal and made me anxious. I was one of those little girls who, despite stereotypes, did not grow up dreaming of walking down an aisle one day with the white veil. It was all a bit overwhelming for me. I was much happier being married than getting married.

Now that its been more than a few years since I’ve been to one, I’m looking forward to celebrating the wedding of another. For the young singles in the crowd, my husband and I will be some of the invisible middle aged crowd who vaguely knows either the bride or groom, but in unknown ways that don’t really matter. You must remember those folks from going to your first round of weddings, right?

Gone is the pressure of stressing about when I would get to be the bride, wondering if my boyfriend of 2, 3, 4 years would ever pop the question (spoiler alert — he did). I will never miss those days. Gone is the financial weight of attending 5-6 weddings a year. That stuff adds up — dresses, gifts, showers, travel expenses. Gone are the days of hanging out in bars with women holding or eating penis shaped balloons, cookies, lollipops while wearing pink feather boas and cheap plastic tiaras. Whew. I never understood that nonsense.

Left instead is that sense of being able to go back to a familiar land as a tourist instead of a local. I’m looking forward to seeing the groom get the first glimpse of his bride as she walks down the aisle. We never go out dancing these days, so yes, when the Black Eyed Peas play, I will be on that dance floor, not caring how ridiculous I might look. It will be nice to sit in a straight backed chair and think about all the days ahead for this particular soon to be married couple — there is so much hope in a wedding day.

Through my lens as a grizzled, middle aged lady, I know enough to know that on the day you wed, saying “I do,” is a leap of faith, a jump into the unknown. Maybe you can imagine your days together stringing into a life, and possibly anticipate the at times crushing reality of the ordinary, but we never really know what sucker punches life will throw at us.

That person standing next to us is our chosen partner in all of it — the joys, the sorrows, the empty milk cartons, the aisles of the grocery store, the hospitals, the funeral homes, the parks on sunshiney days. There is so much hope and potential in a wedding day. It’s good to remember, even from this in-between place.

Grateful thanks to the gals (one of whom is my beloved cousin) at Studio Starling Photography who very kindly allowed the use of their images for this post. Check them out if you are getting hitched in the Chicago area!

May 22, 2015

Laminated Wedding Vows

My husband and I just celebrated our 14th wedding anniversary. The ‘ivory anniversary’ it’s called, though, in the large numbers of slain elephants being killed for their tusks, the traditional gift has been changed to “animals.” Yeah, um, no, we are not exchanging animals to celebrate fourteen years together.

One thing I love to do on every anniversary is to pull out the laminated wedding vows I keep tucked away in my wallet. And, yes, I keep laminated wedding vows in my wallet.

Our vows, in the sticky fingers of our youngest child. We never could have imagined where our marriage would bring us, but feel so grateful for these words which anchor our love.

A few weeks after we got married way back in May 2001, months before the world changed on 9/11, when we were all a little more innocent, I realized that with the wedding and honeymoon over, there my husband and I were, well, just married and stuff. Our days were hitting routine again with the planning and joy of the wedding over.

I was grateful for that, but also aware that the intense feelings and support and just overall sense of living in a space surrounded by seemingly limitless love for this person you’ve chosen to walk next to for eternity (always the optimist) was falling into memory and replacing it were the mundane tasks of life. Soon, we knew, well, soonish, would be children and a mortgage and all those other things that conspire against the romance of a wedding day.

But then, almost immediately, I realized that we got married for life. It’s not about the day you marry — the party and the dress and the dancing — but the life you create together. The wedding vows that were written independently, to be heard for the first time as we spoke them to one another, reflected that knowledge. I wanted those vows to be part of our marriage, not just part of our wedding day.

Enter the laminating machine.

I made two copies, one for each of us, and gave them to my husband with some timidity. I hoped he would not think me an insufferable sentimentalist (though I am). I read them aloud again then put them in my wallet sleeve, tucked just behind a photo of my parents taken on vacation at the Smokey Mountains in 1963.

Fourteen years later, I am grateful I did that. And, as I hoped, I do look at them. Not every day, mind you, but a few times a year. When I am feeling low and need a reminder. When I am feeling distant from my husband. When I am feeling like the Universe is working against me and I need confirmation it is not. When we are knee deep in diapers and math worksheets and bills. When I start to spend a wee bit too much time daydreaming about being alone on a beach with not a soul around me.

I read those vows and I feel better. They transport me to May 19, 2001, a gorgeous spring day chock full of everyone I loved most in the world, standing next to the man I now got to call “husband.” That day was lousy with love. I was drenched in it. We were both young and pretty and head over heels and full of hope.

That hope and love and intensity and wanting to never forget any of it is why I laminated our vows. I wanted to keep those words and that hope close. So far, it seems to be working.

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