Monday, October 22, 2007
Tanya's big day
Bea and I just got back from Arnprior, where my sister was married over the weekend to her guy, Steve.
They have lived together for something like 5 years. As the priest (Catholic) delivered his lines (yes, lines, he had the book there and was reading right from it), I really felt the gap between the ceremony he was giving and the lives of the people to whom he was speaking. The glories of marriage, the difficulties, the miracle of "two people becoming one flesh" -- Tanya and Steve have gone through most of that, on a practical level, already. They could have told the priest a thing or two about patience and fidelity.
( One flesh! I quietly giggled - church does that to me, with its old world speech whose words now only creep up in fetish stores )
But somehow the ritual still has power. Tanya's joy and Steve's pensive smile where hard to ignore. There is power in people coming together before their friends and families.
Then a lengthy string of photo sessions and drinking as we all tried to chill out from the tension of hoping that things would go well. Because hope does make you tense.