It is best to schedule your wedding on a weekend when a tornado is not also scheduled.

I took my time on Friday morning, had some breakfast, caught the metro to Reagan National, took a nap on the plane, read some Lolita, landed early, no problems. Jess' fiance was going to pick me up, but he was a few minutes late. When he arrived, he said, "Yeah, we've had some...weather...here..."

No kidding. There were uprooted trees, flooded streets, whole stretches of road with no stoplights. Apparently on Thursday night while I had been singing along to Emmylou Harris while I packed my carry-on, Chicago was experiencing a major tornado. Flights were cancelled, some delayed, people were on standby, waiting in Atlanta, New York, Mexico. The logistics of picking everyone up at the airport while managing to tie together the last-minute preparations (Wait, which side do the bride's guests sit on again? Did you pay for the cake? Did you pick up the veil? Do we need to get cash for the band?) and operating in a neighborhood without electricity...it was interesting. The rehearsal, with the three pastors and the herd of small children, in a dark church, wasn't as ... illuminating as rehearsals usually are.

Saturday morning, at the mall after a leisurely breakfast, we got nails and hair done, quickly and beautfully. We were still in the shower when we were supposed to be leaving the hotel. We weren't sure how to put her veil into her hairdo, fitted around the tiara. The pianist had an hour to practice. She started walking down the aisle an hour after scheduled, but no one really cared, because here she was, beautiful, walking down the aisle with her tall father, surrounded by little Mexican girls and white tigerlilies, and her fiance was waiting at the end for her, that petrified groom look melting into a look of love and joy. The lights came back on in the middle of the ceremony.

And the reception was a fiesta, with a mariachi band! And food! And family! And delicious cake!

It just goes to show that neither rain, nor tornados, nor delayed flights, nor humidity, nor not knowing how to put on a veil, nor not having enough cash for the mariachi band, nor not paying for the cake on time, will keep two lovers apart.

They Grow Up So Fast

The last, heady days of high school in Colorado Springs. The weather was warm, we had all picked our colleges and purchased the requisite apparel, proudly advertising our school of choice. Our homework had dwindled to a trickle-nominal things that merely punctuated our drifts in and out of the school building, like commas in a long run-on sentence. We spent a lot of time in each other's backyards, strumming on guitars, eating ice cream, talking about the adventures that surely awaited us when we arrived as freshmen in a few months. Graduation day wasn't as climactic as graduation season itself.


Somewhere in graduation season, the idea occurred to me, the result of some long conversation some warm spring night, to give my friend Jessica a graduation gift. Not a monogrammed Bible, not an envelope of cash, not an address book so she could keep in touch with us and always remember to STAY SWEET! BFF! No, I drove down to the south of town and purchased the last duckling for sale in the whole city. He was a white-crested duck. He looked something like the hatted duck in this photo:

I took the duckling in his box, with feed, of course, to Jessica's house. Although I had warned her family, Jessica was surprised, which was just how I planned it. We christened the duck Homer, in tribute to a movie that had affirmed our nerdiness and provided hours of entertainment, much of it having to do with our physics class.

Homer, it turned out, was a girl. She taught herself how to throw herself up the stairs of the front porch, crouching as much as she could and then hurdling up like a fluffy cannonball and landing on her belly on the next step. She lived in the backyard kiddie pool or in the bathtub. She went on walks. She exercised her quack. She maintained the fluff atop her head with pride. She was a good duck.

We all went off to college-I to California and Jessica to Pennsylvania. Homer stayed home and paddled around the kiddie pool. The next time I heard of Homer, I learned that, lo and behold, she had attained her 15 minutes of fame, picture published in the Gazette, had even showed up in court.

Jessica' mother had sold Homer to her yoga instructor, who had provided Homer with a loving and caring home. The neighbors, however, were not terribly fond of the new pet, and claimed that the duck, and her quack in particular, was a nuisance and should be forcibly removed from the neighborhood. The spat went to court. Homer won.

Homer's new owner, celebrating her court victory and Homer's 15 minutes of fame, threw Homer a sangria party. The invitations pictured Homer wearing a red party hat. Jessica and I were so proud.

Jessica's since gotten her Masters and lived in Mexico, moved to Chicago and fallen in love. She's getting married next week, and I'll be there. There are some friends you just feel like you *live* with, no matter how far apart you've gotten or where you've moved, some ceremonies we have to go to because we've crissed and crossed in and out of each other's lives so regularly, with such unexpected joy and coincidence, that there must be something real to this friendship. Some friendships are solidified by a trip to the Turkish baths (you know who you are), or a night in a haunted Sri Lankan hotel, and some, by a white crested duck.

And the Living is Easy

It is nice to think, "Maybe I'll go out tonight," and then stand up, pick up your purse, and go, ignoring the coats hanging in the foyer, the boots stashed under the bed 'til winter, and the scarves that are neatly folded on the upper shelf. It's nice to meander down through the farmer's market, run your eyes over the fresh tomatoes, and then continue meandering to a terrace, order some coffee, and drink it outside without adjusting your sweater to protect against the intrusion of a cool breeze.

I appreciate the change of the seasons, the ripple of cold in the air as autumn approaches, the urge around the end of September to wear something warm and camel colored and maybe bring a thick red scarf just in case, the sudden appearance of pumpkins in the grocery stores. I appreciate the cold winter with the long warm coats and the fresh snow and the hot drinks. I appreciate the spring when the greens are tender and the flowers are innocent and nothing seems to have ever heard of age or death. But summer is my favorite. Summer is when I feel that I could, if I set my mind to it, conquer the world, when art is most meaningful and friendships more invigorating. There is something about the heat and the sweat and the constant temperature, the sheer bliss of having a cold drink in the hot sun, the ability to sit out all night on your roof and never fear the cold, that makes me feel immortal and capable. Summer is when I Plan My Life, consider things that I'm too miserable to consider in the winter when it's cold and I'm preoccupied with thawing my fingers. Summer is when I get up the energy to call old friends and invite people over and drop in uninvited and buy plane tickets in anticipation of a lazy August and peruse grad school catalogues.

I don't know if it's the fact that the seasons here do change and I have therefore learned to appreciate summer all the more, or if I just really like warmth. I think it's the latter: I have only visited Florida once, and it was August, and what I found alarming, in a pure rush of realization, was that the water and the air were not only the same color, but the same temperature. You could wade and wade and hardly tell where the water ended and the air began, only sometimes by looking down through the ripples and seeing your toes in the sand, broken by soft, soft waves and tiny, tiny grains. The California waves are cold and harsh and loud, but here, there were no waves, there were no crashes or rocks. Just water and sand and water, turquoise and aqua, warm as a baby's bathtub, smooth and wet. It was beautiful and inspiring and made my heart beat faster.

Maybe if I lived by the Florida beach and saw it every day, or under a palm tree in St. Martin, or by a Tahitian lagoon, the refreshing feeling of warmth and summer would wear off and it would be same, same, uninspiring and boring. Maybe. Maybe I would miss the metallic smell of winter and the gradual thaw of spring.

For now, I'll stick with the four seasons and enjoy the trickles of sweat that begin creeping down my back as soon as I step out of my air conditioned office, the sticky smell of skin and sun, and the feeling of life, life! that surges through my fingers when I step out into the heat.