Dowry or Brideprice? Ah, shucks, everyone pays!

In the old days - pick some date in history about which you know nothing - dowry was assumed. The father paid the groom , depending on your view of the world, for the expense of setting up a household with his daughter, or as a signing bonus for shifting the cost of supporting the girl off his household profit and loss statement. The nearest thing to it today is the help ($$) that the bride's father (traditionally) gives toward the ceremony. And I've already said, though we've had help from many quarters, we're not having a traditional wedding.

What I was doing last week could be called "brideprice." But then, I volunteered. I spent the week with TWIL's dad and stepmom. We cleared brush, moved neglected piles of firewood, cleared some more brush, then pulled up patio paving stones and put down some that were far nicer, not just where they were but over a an area so wide that it's now the place where we'll have cocktails after the wedding. So you could call it "gullible," "sucking up," or for the good-natured among you, "only fair," because much as I love them, I would have to be crazy to do what they're doing. We love the way they're crazy.

Now, we did have help: Chris Danielson and girlfriend Jess Franco were in town from Boulder CO. He was laying paving stone, too, thank god. Another wedding guest and long-time colleague of Lee's, Peter Mear, was also hard at work. Mike Ferro, brother in law and husband of Ellen (sister), also spent 2/3 of a day humping stone like a Trojan (even though the cliches are right, it sounds wrong, doesn't it?).

Lee, Jean Roberts, Alan Betz (brother in law), and Karen Betz (sister). Apologies all around for this snapshot. Really, it's the best of the lot.

On Friday night, my sister Karen, her husband Alan, and their daughter Katherine came to a barbeque with my mom, Jean, and dad, Dave.

People often ask me, "John, what is Auburn like?"

What they actually say is, "Ah, cold up there! You want another drink?", turn heel and ... zip.

When TWIL and I visited Auburn on my way to Rochester recently - more about that tomorrow - we quickly ran out of things to do. That happens in Auburn. In fact, everyone else was busy. Ellen and her kids were working and playing at the Reva Rollerdrome, which she owns with her husband Mike Ferro. Margot, my oldest niece is a competitive roller figure skater and anchor staff at the concession stand. (The joke in my house is that it's like being a great accordianist. We're so proud; don't encourage her.) Mom was cooking for the father's day cook out. Mom cooks every year about this time.

Thank goodness there's mini-golf. Notice there's no astroturf under TWIL's feet? It was that kind of game. And TWIL bested me by a mile.

Fortunately, there's a home-grown ice cream place, Reese's Dairy Stop (think DQ with seemingly infinite menu options) at the golf "course." Which is like shooting schools of fish in a small barrel with a depth charge. It was 11:00 a.m. when we finished our round of golf and I was already disappointed about waiting so long. Incredibly, they weren't serving soft ice cream. Which is what you pull off the road in the heat for if you grew up near Auburn and didn't have air conditioning in your car (that was a lot of us back then). You could have hard ice cream at home and the driver - always Dad - knew it.

It was already incredibly humid on a very changeable Father's Day. As the weather shifted, we tagged it with varying degrees of comfort. "This is an okay day for a wedding." "Feels like it's going to rain. Oh, boy." "Now this would be a little uncomfortable." "I'm going to die in that dress if it's like this." That's TWIL speaking last.

We're calculating how long it takes to get from the Wedding spot to Abbott's, the Rochester place for frozen yogurt. Bookish Girl says so. Me, I don't get into fine distinctions when it comes to ice cream products. More cream is better. But easy access and quantity trump any other criteria. Even two-dimensional ice cream will do in a pinch.

Avez-vous une billet doux pour nous? Countdown to RSVP

Bills, bills, junk, and Ah, there it is! The note telling us you are coming to the wedding! Or even regrets. No. No, sorry. Maybe it's not yours after all.

Today marks exactly one month from the RSVP deadline date. We're dying of suspense daily when the stack of otherwise irrelevant mail bangs the bottom of the mailbox.

So eager are we that I created a tracker here at ...Bliss where you can see the percentage of you who have responded. See the pink bar on the right? Specifically, 45% of you have responded. What does that look like?, see photo exhibit A. To 45 percent of you, a thousand blessings on you and your house.

So type-A are we that sometime on July 16, you'll hear from us. First by email. Then by phone. Then, by sherrif and bounty hunter if need be. Oh, yes, you will.

Marriage Equality. Hooray for Massachusetts!

When I wrote that marrying has taught me why everyone should be able to do this, and that they must get the rights that go along with it, I was not optimistic that the legislature would keep the question from reaching a statewide ballot. But my pessimism was vindicated today.

Deval Patrick, recently elected governor, played an important leadership role and deserves thanks, along with many other people.

Imagine for a moment that just a couple years after happily marrying, the state in which you live threatened to take away your marriage, and with it the rights that spouses enjoy. That's what some of our friends may have been facing if the measure was not defeated today. We couldn't be more relieved and happy.

To read the news story, click the title link.

Dear Dick: Where did we go?

Dear Dick,

Where did she go? She was here just a minute ago.

Throughout the months and weeks leading up to the wedding, you see your fiancee in new lights. This is essential. This is the crucible. This is who she is. The calm and deliberate life you lead, that's shown you - oh, fill in a percentage here; much less than 100% - that's what you've seen so far.

At least one thing that you treasure about her will be the thing that leaves you feeling lonely between now and your wedding. At the shower, I looked up - I know I've told you about this, Dick. I did, didn't I? Yeah, this round's on him, bartender - So I look up and sure enough, I can see her, but it's not really her. Take a look at the photos. She's focused on the person she's talking to. She wondering if everyone is enjoying themselves. She's aware that there are four people she hasn't talked to and she's carrying on an internal discussion about whether she should worry - no, she shouldn't worry she tells herself. But she breaks away anyway and turns her highbeams on them. All the while she keeps an eye on the room in peripheral vision. The one person she's not worrying about is me.

I love focus of her attention. It's mostly generous and forgiving. It's mostly supportive and kind. Better than these tritenesses, it's mostly mine. Not now. It's for the rest of you. You'll see, Dick.

And I'll be doing the same. Have you got enough to drink, did you meet my mother, I'm not saying anything about your tie (or your shirt or your shoes) - I'm NOT. I don't know if she's looking for me. Or at me. I'm fine. At the end of the day, like the end of the shower, she looks at me with fires banked low and rolls over to sleep. I note to myself that it feels we're far apart. I note she's recharging, not keeping secrets. She's fine and she's not lying when she says she's fine. But you feel alone, Dick. Alone. Which you are. The delight of love is that you don't feel the isolation of being an individual. But that doesn't change the facts.

And then, one or two or three days later, she's back. So are you. You're glad to see each other again. Saved by the hope that you're not really alone in the world. It loomed close, just to remind you that you can't cure the problem of being alive. But this is your break from too much reality. Just one of the hopeful illusions that sustains you between now and the wedding.

Don't be surprised, Dick, when she disappears. And don't give her that look when she reaches out, touches you and doesn't find you. Patience. You'll both be back in no time.

Trivia of the first order

When we met for the shower, Jenni asked people trivia questions to learn more about us, or to embarrass us, or I don't know, to see if we knew anything about each other. Regardless, now you can play, too.


And see how players are doing at the trivia scoreboard.

They Came from Municipalities Far, Far Away

Thanks to all of you who traveled, got baby sitters, left kids with spouses, got on planes, took hotel rooms, ate too much at restaurants around town and spent some part of the weekend lost and looking for the next meeting place or gathering point.

To see a map of places shower guests came from, click the title of this post.

Look at You!

I've added a link to flickr where you can view shower pictures. See the changing tiny pictures at the right? Click that, which will display a page like this:

See those smiling faces? That's my brother in law Mike Ferro and my sister Ellen.

Now, look at the red rectangle at the right. You can scroll through a filmstrip of the photos by using the left and right arrows (shown in gray). If you click on word "browse" (also in gray) between the arrows, you'll see all the shower photographs that we thought were worth posting.

If you send me your photos, I'll be happy to add them to wedding shower group at flickr. And soon you'll hear from Jenni, the matron of honor (oh, that sounds so wrong) about where you can find photos from the same event and have them printed to your local Target or Walgreen's stores.

Not Just Another Day

Lovely, sweet and thoughtful. These are the kinds of things people say about showers. But nobody warned me that the horizon would tip thirty degrees and the contents of our lives slide into one corner. To everyone else, it's lovely. To us, we're overwhelmed by - well - all we could come up with yesterday was "weird."

Over pasta, of all things, the people you dance with meet the people you've known since high school and the people from work meet the people who gave you life and birth. And they are uniformly delighted and curious about one another. All their good wishes are aimed at you. All their curiosity is aimed at uncovering a bit of you in the lives of the other people you love.

Somewhere between the speechlessness and the nervous darting of the eyes and the sudden realization that you have no idea where you fiancee has gotten to, it dawns on you: This wedding has the power to draw all the matter of life into one place. that queasy feeling is the shock of all the little slices of yourself that you shaved off and spread around to these two or those four come together with a clap.

All you can do is stand still and try to take it in, like powerful black hole that is drawing light from everywhere within range. And the best they can do is call it a shower! We'll be lucky if we don't explode on the wedding day.

Singing in the Shower

The Bridal Shower, according to sources, is part of a tradition of helping the bride make up her own dowery with gifts from among friends. Without it, a woman was obliged to marry the man that would have her. With it, she could marry a man of her choice. Friends made up for her poverty in the name of love and sisterhood. It's a good story.

I'm inclined to believe the version of its origin that upper class Americans started the tradition in the age of robber barons. All America wanted what they wanted and the tradition spread unchecked in the last century, the way some girls will choose Paris Hilton's brand of jailhouse pumps. Regardless, it's here and the families have descended on Somerville like axis powers at Versailles.

Near-crisis one. A Certain Parent was delayed by the airline. The devil you say? Impossible! So Frank's Steak House got the first call of the evening from TWIL, "...Could we push that reservation back a bit? Oh, thanks and what's your name....?" In time, the plane landed.

Cellphones vibrated to a white hot heat. The rental car of a Certain Parent had been given away by Avis. Near crisis two. Not just any car. A car that would allow the favorite step dad to pack a wheelchair in the trunk and still swing into his seat. Amazing guy. No, the Ford Focus will not work as a substitute. "Hello, I'm sorry, what's your name again....? We'd like to push that reservation back a bit. Yes." And TWIL and I are thinking, this is good, as long as the ad hoc cocktail hour doesn't go on too long. Rochester and his wife are arriving; they can join us.

Near-crisis three. At the AmeriSuites in Medford, the hotel staff had given away a Certain Parent's room. Now, if you're me, and a so-called customer Service Person is politely telling you that the thing you paid for and reserved weeks ahead is gone and that they want to help you but, they're sorry, there are limited options, you're beginning to bemoan the scarcity of block ice as cooling method, because not that long ago, ice picks were a common commodity in any hotel and restaurant. And I've imagined many times how neatly a little justice might be served up with three or four perforations of the thorax of a smiling, powerless Service Person. But it was not me, gods be praised. Rooms were found, composure was regained, peace flowed like a river, and Frank's did not see a Certain Parent and Favorite Stepdad because they had too much sense to go out again looking for calamity to strike. In fairness to the hotel, whatever they did wrong, they more than made up for, by all accounts.

In the meantime, Ellen and Mike (my sister and brother in law, or BIL) landed in time to join us for the second half of the meal. That is, the part that is commonly known as eating. Joan, our waitress, was unfailingly great to us.

Go to Frank's. If not for the food, which was good, then to wait while crises pass over.