Looking Back

 The week before my Kindergarten Colleague went off to see her daughter wed, we exchanged stories about all the ways in which trauma turns into memories. My personal contribution to this give and take was the story of my own wedding. The one in which my wife got a nasty case of poison oak on her forearm, then cleverly covered it with lacy gauntlets, only to be undone by the officiant at our ceremony who announced to all assembled that my blushing bride was carrying a blotchy red rash beneath her bouquet. This revelation came just a little after the one where I discovered that I had not brought my pants up to the mountain meadow, but was helped out by my father who had a spare pair. And a belt. Which was only topped by the lack of rings and the items that we had hoped to put on the makeshift altar. We got around that by borrowing my older brother's and his wife's for the actual ceremony. I suggested, some years after the fact, that it was good to put all those quirky bits in our nuptials to "pre-disaster" the marriage that would come directly after. 

I think it worked out pretty well. My Kindergarten Colleague shared her own recollections from her wedding, and her college graduation, and any number of public celebrations in which the bumps and bangs turned into stories over time. Stories that go beyond the easy recitation of humdrum events. The stories that you get to tell when you show the pictures. The stories behind the stories. 

I met my Kindergarten Colleague on her way to her classroom a few days after she returned. I asked if she had any pictures of the event. A silly question to ask the mother of the bride, admittedly, but it was the opportunity to expand on our previous chat and an invitation to share more about her happy moment in the midst of this odd year. 

All of the pictures were of extremely well-dressed individuals. Wearing masks. Every single one of them. They looked like so very many other wedding pictures of people I have never met. But they were all wearing masks. Which wasn't like anything I had ever seen before. Getting married during a global pandemic may be a level of pre-disaster that even a curmudgeon like myself can appreciate. 

In the years ahead, there will be moments when we look back at this time. We'll look at the empty stands during that World Series. We'll remember how Zoom became a thing. We'll remember how hugs disappeared for a while. 

But love never did. 

And that's something I will always remember.