Four Weeks (Part Four)

August 25, 2008, 9:30 am; posted by
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Read the series in parts: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10

We didn\’t plan to bring John to the wedding, but when we found out the reception was taking place on the grounds of a zoo, it only seemed fitting. And his suit was already in the trunk, after all, wedged in at the last moment by our mother, ever hopeful that we would change our minds and sneak him in. That\’s how I found myself parking in the terraced lot of a random South Carolina church, angled to block the view of passing cars, while my brothers donned the traditional, oppressive wedding garb of our people.

The Palmetto State was hot and sticky, like a candy bar sent through the dryer, and as I amused myself by releasing the emergency brake and watching John scurry to keep up with the trunk, I found it hard to fathom the state’s near-myth status in the rural Northeast. How many people — young women, especially — had I heard confess their ambition to leave New York for the temperate beauty and utopian job market of South Carolina? Slow-cooking in a black suit, the attraction puzzled me. If I\’m going to give up snow and seasons, I demand climatic perfection: Honolulu, San Diego, Omaha. This was just Florida North: sweaty, crowded, and muggy, with fewer snakes and better drivers.

The wedding itself was most notable for the objection; the objection was most notable for the $50 the groom paid to obtain it. I suspect that this combination may have also made the couple’s ride to the reception quite, er, notable.

At the lovely baked potato reception, we took a place behind the dance floor, so as best to ruin the pictures, and celebrated our friend’s wedding with a group of Syracusans, many of whom I may never see again. Nothing in life comes alone; when you open your door to one thing, you spread it wide to a world of unintended, unexpected consequences. One downside to a month-long trip of reconnection is the awareness, the repeated, painful awareness, that everything ends. The arriving is sweet, the staying divine, but there is, too, always the leaving. Without it, the joy would have no meaning; alongside it, the joy can never be complete.

After a stroll through botanical gardens, we were off again, driving in shifts through dark Virginia and a foggy D.C. We slept for a few hours in the parking lot (and, later, the well-appointed youth room) of the Exton Community Baptist Church, before joining Bweinh!’s own Rev. Mike Jordan and his church to worship. You can actually listen to that sermon right here. Running on three hours of sleep, I didn\’t doze off once.

Mike had family and a then-very pregnant wife to attend to, so soon we were on Staten Island, introducing John to the wonders of White Castle — and then my brothers were off, heading home, leaving me to complete the next portions of my trip alone: New York City, California, New Mexico. The long drives had ended, but the long flights were dead ahead.


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