A Walker in the Suburbs

I didn’t give a toast on Saturday night. But this is what I would have said if I did. I would have riffed on the saying “it takes a village to make a child.” I would have said that it also takes a village to make a wedding. Everything from the rehearsal dinner on Friday to the dog watching and wedding photography on Saturday was provided by friends or friends of friends.

The marriage itself, of course, is up to the two people involved. But a community has now witnessed Suzanne and Appolinaire’s vows. And I could feel the love and support of that community swell up behind me as I sat in the front row watching my daughters, all three of them, walk down the aisle of mulch that we laid only a few weeks ago (again, with the help of family and friends). That love and support is like money in the bank for the young couple, something they can draw on through years of life together.

There is much to say about all of this. Too much. My heart is full right now.

But while the tent is still up (the rental company comes for it today) and the magic is still fresh, let me just say that the backyard will be forever transformed by the presence of those we love who came (some from as far away as Paris) to celebrate with us. Dear family, neighbors who watched Suzanne grow up, friends from high school and college and work and childrearing. Appolinaire’s best man Fidel, who grew up in a village not far from him and speaks the same mother tongue.

The big events of life rise up like tall peaks through the fog of daily living. You plan for them, work for them and often wonder if they’re worth the effort. But once they happen (and even as they’re happening if you’re lucky, in moments or snatches of moments), you know they’re worth every penny, every hour. Because they stop time; they define and sanctify the everyday.

The wedding is behind us now. But it’s all around us, too. And it always will be.

It’s been a long hot summer, and September has dawned cool and rainy. The plants are lapping it up. The parched soil is getting a well-earned dousing.

The mums I’ve stored in the basement are up on the deck now, awaiting final placement but getting sprinkled with the real thing rather than a cup of water.

And here at Wedding Central, we’re about to run a zillion errands. Homo Errandus, the errand-running human. In and out of the car, in and out of stores, always with the list in hand. The bible. Crossing things off, blessed relief.

Here we go.

Last week I drove through the neighborhood in the slanting late-afternoon sun to see small plastic flags flying at the foot of every mailbox. They hadn’t been there when I left in the morning but there they were, a full week before Flag Day.

Turns out they were a gift from our representative, but that’s not what struck me about them then or now.

What I’ve been noticing is that, although they all started at the same place they have ended up all over. Some are hanging from the mailbox, others are attached to the lamppost or planted near the house. Mine is in the fern garden.

They have, in short, been individualized. How very American of us. It’s what we do best.

I thought of this idea last week, and planned to use it to celebrate our individuality. But now, flags are flying at half mast. Now I’m once again thinking about how the push for independence and autonomy that makes us strong has also made us vulnerable.

The flags are still flying, in all their unique positions. I hope they always will.

Some of us remember that this year the national holiday falls on the real Memorial Day, May 30.

But the double I’m thinking of is at Camp Nelson, the veteran’s cemetery nestled in the rolling hills half an hour south of Lexington. There Mom and Dad lie together. A hero’s grave.

I commute now through Arlington Cemetery, and I look up from my newspaper when we briefly come above ground there. I see the orderly stones, the tidiness of death at a military burial ground.

Life is so messy — but life is what we remember. And the least tidy lives we remember most. The passions and the excesses and the outbursts and the love. These can never be contained in measured plots and structured rows. 

And on this double Memorial Day I’m feeling doubly this way.