![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
captainsblogI guess it's fitting. It's Christmas and we're
That's not the weird part, though. After over a century between us of dysfunction and discord in our family gatherings round the end of the year, we're fine with low-key. We had leftover Chinese for lunch and talked about going to a movie later. Do I get my Jew Card automatically or do I have to wait eight days?
No, let me take you back in time a mere 48 hours to a cold but snowless day in beautiful Orleans County, where a Christmas miracle occurred.
The participants in the service:
M. Father to one of Eleanor's friends from the local Buddhist community. Both live in this area, although HE and his daughter moved here from another state. M is reasonably close to her, but it's not exactly Norman Rockwell material. His fourth trip to the altar.
K. Friend of mine (unless somehow she comes upon this post), from some Methodist Things I did about 10 years ago. She has also left the faith, quite understandably given where Methodists are going these days, and also left the second husband in the past few years, also quite understandably. That divorce became final a month or so ago, putting us on this course to a Christmas Eve Eve celebration.
K's Mother. That's REVEREND K's Mother, to you. Yes, K is a PK (definition 5), which I never knew until this weekend. It's her current Methodist parish which hosted this event- a small, traditional, dripping-of-Wonder-Bread-and-Mayo house of worship much like 100 Methodist parishes within 40 miles of it. Seems to be a nice person, gave a good sermon, but we had to wonder, when the day was done, just how much of this she'd signed up for.
Assorted kids, cousins, parents and grandparents of the intendeds. Including Eleanor's friend X, M's adult daughter. We mainly accepted the invitation to support her at what we knew could turn into a trying time; she survived a traumatic experience some years ago, is still not able to work or drive, and needed our attention far more than the soon to be happy couple did.
We were relatively early arrivals. M greeted us as we took our seats (neither of us had ever met him before, although I'd talked with him on the phone once or twice). Other assorted fams were flitting about, including the Obligatory Precocious Child Threatening to Knock Shit Over (and, the Christmas bling all still being up, there was plenty to knock over), and K's kids (who I knew from pictures, and anyone would know looking at them, that they were her kids- they look exactly like her, although oddly, her mother doesn't look all that much like K).
This sanctuary, probably close in age to the 1840s structure in Williamsville that we joined in 1994 and left in 2017, was wired up pretty high tech, with video projecting of title cards, an iPad for the minister and celebrants, and another Apple-ish thing I suspect was live-streaming the event. But there were traditional bulletins, as well, which told us that following the prelude (basically "Every Christmas Carol Ever Recorded"), there would be a "Lighting the Way" by "Family and Friends." Apparently, X was to be involved in this process, whatever it was; on the drive out (including, I kid you not, downtown Alabama), I'd asked Eleanor if X was in the service or merely going to be at it, and she believed it was the latter, as did X until she got there. (This did enable us to sit on the groom's side with her; before this, given our mixed backgrounds, I proposed just sitting in the aisle, the better to make a hasty exit if necessary.)
No, they didn't inform her of her processional responsibilities until she arrived less than 20 minutes before kickoff. (The Bills were playing at the same time. They lost to the Patriots. What else is new?) This is also when she found out that most of the participants had worked all this shiz out at a rehearsal at the church the night before, followed by the traditional rehearsal dinner. X was left out of this- ostensibly out of concern that if she knew what she was going to be asked to do, she'd freak out or something.
"What she was going to be asked to do," along with several other participants, was to carry a festive candle-in-a-candy-dish (or possibly a Coleman lantern) and place it along the altar rail. (My notes: Look! They're bringing up IED's! I hope they don't go off!) There was considerable hubbub in the back while these details were explained to X and whoever else got left out of the planning; the organist was reaching back into the obscure Annunciation of Mary hymns to keep things moving (My notes: And everyone, including God, is saying CMON GET ON WITH IT!).
Finally, they processed, M came out to await a quite beautiful K, and the service itself was quite nice. They ended with a line from a traditional Methodist (Anglican before it) wedding service which we had to fight to get into our own service in 1987 as not being too twee ("that their home may be a haven of blessing"), and they emphasized how the vows were not just for this day but to be repeated tomorrow and all of their tomorrows.
The IED's were then carried to the tables in the Fellowship Hall to serve as centerpieces for the Very Methodist Lunch to follow. We helped X discharge some anxiety as this day, for her, would continue well into the evening; the "fun part" of the celebration, Karaoke Night at the Banquet Joint on the Boulevard closer to home for all of us. We'd passed on that; I gave up party favors and the Electric Slide for Lent in around 1993 and see no reason to pick them up again. But X was gonna be there- which, hours and texts later, revealed that all was loud, all was weird. Someone was talking shit about her- if not to her face, to the hearing of her plus-one for the reception- and when X got up to do a song or two with her dad (who, yaknow, she's known and lived with for way more than the 3 years of miles on the current couple's tires), she got shit for that, too. It's not about you, dear, it's about the happy couple.
She got through it- and is now back in Old Home State to spend the rest of the holiday with her boyfriend from those parts, who paid for her ticket to rescue her from this weekend of therapy fodder.
I'm hoping this is temporary. Weddings can turn even good people into Mr. & Mrs. Hyde, with the expectations of society pouring all over them. Throw in the added agitas of doing it all two days before Christmas, add in that your Reverend Mother/MIL (who assuredly did not get the next day off), and oh, have the water line in the adjacent parsonage blow up three hours before the ceremony. We wished them many happy returns, and hope those never include any returns to that or any other altar except as parents of the bride(s) or groom(s).
That's not the weird part, though. After over a century between us of dysfunction and discord in our family gatherings round the end of the year, we're fine with low-key. We had leftover Chinese for lunch and talked about going to a movie later. Do I get my Jew Card automatically or do I have to wait eight days?
No, let me take you back in time a mere 48 hours to a cold but snowless day in beautiful Orleans County, where a Christmas miracle occurred.
The participants in the service:
M. Father to one of Eleanor's friends from the local Buddhist community. Both live in this area, although HE and his daughter moved here from another state. M is reasonably close to her, but it's not exactly Norman Rockwell material. His fourth trip to the altar.
K. Friend of mine (unless somehow she comes upon this post), from some Methodist Things I did about 10 years ago. She has also left the faith, quite understandably given where Methodists are going these days, and also left the second husband in the past few years, also quite understandably. That divorce became final a month or so ago, putting us on this course to a Christmas Eve Eve celebration.
K's Mother. That's REVEREND K's Mother, to you. Yes, K is a PK (definition 5), which I never knew until this weekend. It's her current Methodist parish which hosted this event- a small, traditional, dripping-of-Wonder-Bread-and-Mayo house of worship much like 100 Methodist parishes within 40 miles of it. Seems to be a nice person, gave a good sermon, but we had to wonder, when the day was done, just how much of this she'd signed up for.
Assorted kids, cousins, parents and grandparents of the intendeds. Including Eleanor's friend X, M's adult daughter. We mainly accepted the invitation to support her at what we knew could turn into a trying time; she survived a traumatic experience some years ago, is still not able to work or drive, and needed our attention far more than the soon to be happy couple did.
We were relatively early arrivals. M greeted us as we took our seats (neither of us had ever met him before, although I'd talked with him on the phone once or twice). Other assorted fams were flitting about, including the Obligatory Precocious Child Threatening to Knock Shit Over (and, the Christmas bling all still being up, there was plenty to knock over), and K's kids (who I knew from pictures, and anyone would know looking at them, that they were her kids- they look exactly like her, although oddly, her mother doesn't look all that much like K).
This sanctuary, probably close in age to the 1840s structure in Williamsville that we joined in 1994 and left in 2017, was wired up pretty high tech, with video projecting of title cards, an iPad for the minister and celebrants, and another Apple-ish thing I suspect was live-streaming the event. But there were traditional bulletins, as well, which told us that following the prelude (basically "Every Christmas Carol Ever Recorded"), there would be a "Lighting the Way" by "Family and Friends." Apparently, X was to be involved in this process, whatever it was; on the drive out (including, I kid you not, downtown Alabama), I'd asked Eleanor if X was in the service or merely going to be at it, and she believed it was the latter, as did X until she got there. (This did enable us to sit on the groom's side with her; before this, given our mixed backgrounds, I proposed just sitting in the aisle, the better to make a hasty exit if necessary.)
No, they didn't inform her of her processional responsibilities until she arrived less than 20 minutes before kickoff. (The Bills were playing at the same time. They lost to the Patriots. What else is new?) This is also when she found out that most of the participants had worked all this shiz out at a rehearsal at the church the night before, followed by the traditional rehearsal dinner. X was left out of this- ostensibly out of concern that if she knew what she was going to be asked to do, she'd freak out or something.
"What she was going to be asked to do," along with several other participants, was to carry a festive candle-in-a-candy-dish (or possibly a Coleman lantern) and place it along the altar rail. (My notes: Look! They're bringing up IED's! I hope they don't go off!) There was considerable hubbub in the back while these details were explained to X and whoever else got left out of the planning; the organist was reaching back into the obscure Annunciation of Mary hymns to keep things moving (My notes: And everyone, including God, is saying CMON GET ON WITH IT!).
Finally, they processed, M came out to await a quite beautiful K, and the service itself was quite nice. They ended with a line from a traditional Methodist (Anglican before it) wedding service which we had to fight to get into our own service in 1987 as not being too twee ("that their home may be a haven of blessing"), and they emphasized how the vows were not just for this day but to be repeated tomorrow and all of their tomorrows.
The IED's were then carried to the tables in the Fellowship Hall to serve as centerpieces for the Very Methodist Lunch to follow. We helped X discharge some anxiety as this day, for her, would continue well into the evening; the "fun part" of the celebration, Karaoke Night at the Banquet Joint on the Boulevard closer to home for all of us. We'd passed on that; I gave up party favors and the Electric Slide for Lent in around 1993 and see no reason to pick them up again. But X was gonna be there- which, hours and texts later, revealed that all was loud, all was weird. Someone was talking shit about her- if not to her face, to the hearing of her plus-one for the reception- and when X got up to do a song or two with her dad (who, yaknow, she's known and lived with for way more than the 3 years of miles on the current couple's tires), she got shit for that, too. It's not about you, dear, it's about the happy couple.
She got through it- and is now back in Old Home State to spend the rest of the holiday with her boyfriend from those parts, who paid for her ticket to rescue her from this weekend of therapy fodder.
I'm hoping this is temporary. Weddings can turn even good people into Mr. & Mrs. Hyde, with the expectations of society pouring all over them. Throw in the added agitas of doing it all two days before Christmas, add in that your Reverend Mother/MIL (who assuredly did not get the next day off), and oh, have the water line in the adjacent parsonage blow up three hours before the ceremony. We wished them many happy returns, and hope those never include any returns to that or any other altar except as parents of the bride(s) or groom(s).
no subject
Date: 2018-12-31 03:24 am (UTC)