To Have and To Hold

Two high school girlfriends and I created a reunion of sorts when one of our dear friends from the Class of '89 married a lovely man last weekend and we converged on Maryland for the event. One of us was a hip New Yorker, the other a pregnant mother of a preschooler, and then there was I, pretty psyched to be childless-for-weekend woman WITH a Pregnant Friend (aka Designated Driver). Add a rental car, several maps to various destinations, and two nights in different cities and different beds, and you have one exciting weekend for three broads with normally mundane lives (well, okay, Hip New Yorker is heading to Paris next week).

Of course, we drank wine (two of us at least), shared mascara, and appraised one another's outfits. We also spent a fair amount of time on Maryland roads, walking down memory lane and smirking at signs on tackle shops ("Looking for Bait? Here 'tis!") and churches ("Satan only suggests; you choose").

But our best moments were mugging for photos in the stockades at the wedding's historic site, and on the dance floor, boogieing down and requesting songs on the couple's Do Not Play List (I understand the "Hokey Pokey," but the "Electric Slide"? Yeah, we were shot down. We did manage to get the hapless deejay to play "Tootsie Roll").

We drove back to the airport/train station with the newly-marrieds' party-favor CD as soundtrack, featuring tunes from Psychedelic Furs, The Proclaimers, and Modern English, which made us feel like not much had happened to our bride friend in the music department in the 19 years since we graduated.

The wedding ceremony was absolutely lovely, and I include some wonderful quotes here:

• From Yeats, "When You Are Old": "One man loved the pilgrim soul in you,/And loved the sorrows of your changing face."
  
  

• "So Much Happiness" by Naomi Shihab Nye: "Since there is no place large enough/To contain so much happiness,/You shrug, you raise your hands, and it flows out of you/Into everything you touch. You are not responsible./You take no credit, as the night sky takes no credit/For the moon, but continues to hold it, and to share it,/And in that way, be known."
  

• From "Epithalamion: A Blessing for the Newlyweds" by Michael Glaser (Maryland's Poet Laureate): "...may you return each evening/to a home of joy and peace/where you are free to choose/the place of your own kneeling,/where you worship at the edge of each other's open door."