Wedding Milestones
Yesterday I reached that time-honored milestone in preparing for a wedding: I made my mother cry.
Phone rings.
DAD: You made your mother cry.
ME: Huh? (racking brain) What are you -- ? How come?
DAD: I don't know. She's not speaking to me.
ME: (thinking; voice over) Great. I'll have made my mother cry and caused my parents to finally get a divorce. Maybe I could burn down the house while I'm at it?
DAD: (in deep Bama drawl) But I don't want you to feel badly, now, baby.
In the background, I could hear Mom sobbing.
ME: No, of course not.
We're not talking sappy, sentimental long-distance-commerical tears, but more like the kind you might expect from one of those scuba divers accidentally left behind by their tour boat in shark-infested waters. Or, apparently, from mothers whose daughters have not formally picked out a Waterford pattern.
DAD: She just got off the phone with Joanne Parker, who wanted to know where you were registered. At what your patterns are. But it would seem that you haven't decided on a china pattern -- now have you?
The question seemed to echo in the air. My dad can be very Clarence Darrow when he wants to be.
ME: Yes. Well, yes and no.
DAD: Which is it? I am confused.
ME: See, I live in a smallish apartment in New York, and it's not like I do a lot of entertaining, and so there are things I might need more urgently than an a Bernardaud toothpick holder, so -
Mom was saying something in the background.
DAD: Your mother seems to think you're not taking this wedding seriously enough.
ME: I take it seriously. It's serious! DEAD SERIOUS. If it were any more serious, it would have its own telethon -
DAD: You have to remember, now, that to women of a certain time and place, a mother who can't rattle off her daughter's crystal and china patterns to the blue-haired ladies who call her up -- well, that's like a Squadron Commander being asked by the General about his fleet of fighter jets, and the Commander saying, what fighter jets?
(Dad often makes elaborate military analogies. For years, the gophers in the front lawn were alternately been compared to Ghenghis Khan and Stalin. These analogies never really make sense unless you've read an awful lot of those Time-Life books on military history. Or gophers.)
ME: Huh?
Finally, I got on the phone with Mom. I've never heard her so mad since that time I fed pizza to my cats (I was 9) and they barfed all on every square inch of the guest room about an hour before some out-of-town guests were set to arrive.
The thing is, Mom is OCD and I'm ADD, so we're on opposite ends of the whole acronym continuum. Usually, this tends to work out surprizingly well. Some of my best friends are among the Organized Ones. Still, I know I must be a bit frustrating to have to deal with someone as brain-addled as I am if you live in a world where everything absolutely must, at all moments, be "perfect". For me, everything must be "more or less good enough, or not - that's okay too." I know it must drive the Organized Ones absolutely insane. (I'd write a book called "ADD Bride: How I almost forgot to get married", or something like that, but the lack of attention span might present a problem.)
Anyway, that was the milestone for yesterday. I still feel terrible about whatever I did or didn't do, although it's not 100% clear what that was (or even 10% clear, but still). But I spoke to Mom and she seems to be doing much better this evening. And not just because I have finally picked out an exhaustive range of china patterns and crystal, even though all I want is a pair of asparagus tongs.
Coming Soon: P and M inadvertanly cause giant rifts among the members of their extended family!
Phone rings.
DAD: You made your mother cry.
ME: Huh? (racking brain) What are you -- ? How come?
DAD: I don't know. She's not speaking to me.
ME: (thinking; voice over) Great. I'll have made my mother cry and caused my parents to finally get a divorce. Maybe I could burn down the house while I'm at it?
DAD: (in deep Bama drawl) But I don't want you to feel badly, now, baby.
In the background, I could hear Mom sobbing.
ME: No, of course not.
We're not talking sappy, sentimental long-distance-commerical tears, but more like the kind you might expect from one of those scuba divers accidentally left behind by their tour boat in shark-infested waters. Or, apparently, from mothers whose daughters have not formally picked out a Waterford pattern.
DAD: She just got off the phone with Joanne Parker, who wanted to know where you were registered. At what your patterns are. But it would seem that you haven't decided on a china pattern -- now have you?
The question seemed to echo in the air. My dad can be very Clarence Darrow when he wants to be.
ME: Yes. Well, yes and no.
DAD: Which is it? I am confused.
ME: See, I live in a smallish apartment in New York, and it's not like I do a lot of entertaining, and so there are things I might need more urgently than an a Bernardaud toothpick holder, so -
Mom was saying something in the background.
DAD: Your mother seems to think you're not taking this wedding seriously enough.
ME: I take it seriously. It's serious! DEAD SERIOUS. If it were any more serious, it would have its own telethon -
DAD: You have to remember, now, that to women of a certain time and place, a mother who can't rattle off her daughter's crystal and china patterns to the blue-haired ladies who call her up -- well, that's like a Squadron Commander being asked by the General about his fleet of fighter jets, and the Commander saying, what fighter jets?
(Dad often makes elaborate military analogies. For years, the gophers in the front lawn were alternately been compared to Ghenghis Khan and Stalin. These analogies never really make sense unless you've read an awful lot of those Time-Life books on military history. Or gophers.)
ME: Huh?
Finally, I got on the phone with Mom. I've never heard her so mad since that time I fed pizza to my cats (I was 9) and they barfed all on every square inch of the guest room about an hour before some out-of-town guests were set to arrive.
The thing is, Mom is OCD and I'm ADD, so we're on opposite ends of the whole acronym continuum. Usually, this tends to work out surprizingly well. Some of my best friends are among the Organized Ones. Still, I know I must be a bit frustrating to have to deal with someone as brain-addled as I am if you live in a world where everything absolutely must, at all moments, be "perfect". For me, everything must be "more or less good enough, or not - that's okay too." I know it must drive the Organized Ones absolutely insane. (I'd write a book called "ADD Bride: How I almost forgot to get married", or something like that, but the lack of attention span might present a problem.)
Anyway, that was the milestone for yesterday. I still feel terrible about whatever I did or didn't do, although it's not 100% clear what that was (or even 10% clear, but still). But I spoke to Mom and she seems to be doing much better this evening. And not just because I have finally picked out an exhaustive range of china patterns and crystal, even though all I want is a pair of asparagus tongs.
Coming Soon: P and M inadvertanly cause giant rifts among the members of their extended family!
posted by Marguerite at 7:54 PM
2 Comments:
your new blog is hilarious. i can't wait for you to keep updating it long after you're married, just like the "underemployed" site soldiers on tho you've since gotten a job.
anyway. i hope someone gets you those asparagus tongs! at this point they've attained a sort of mythic symbolism.
Brilliant.
I was maried going-on 3 years ago, so the whole experience is still vivid.
Actually, I let my wife deal with the family rift issues :) but still, the general tone seems familiar...
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