Wedding tackle

My sister got married. My younger sister got married. My older married brother came up for the wedding, with his wife. I said a speech. They each brought their partner and I brought a speech. (Ok so it was my sister's wedding so I guess she had to bring her partner.) But is anyone seeing the gap here?

Usually, I feel like a benevolent observer at weddings. "How twee," I think. "Look at the fabulous couple embarking on their journey to divorce." (Ok I usually only think that if I read a newspaper that day, which only reminds me that humans are a physical embodiment of grossness, mayhem and violence.)

I almost always contemplate the nature of community celebrations; what it is to publicly declare your union; that a wedding is a torturous process that allows the different families to finally realise who they are letting into their gene pool. I also think back on all the weddings I have attended, or not attended. How weddings seem to be watershed moments in friendships. I ruminate on the cost - how a day can tally up to the same amount as a deposit on a house or a fabulous overseas trip. But this wedding was different.

I had been part of weddings where I was intricately involved in the ceremony. However I had never been part of a family where everyone was or had been married at some point except for yours truly. If you asked me six months ago if it mattered, I would have glibly said no. But when the moment arrived, it did matter. A lot.

Suddenly I was having my own little watershed moment. I was facing a truth. To be married, to have kids (the really big picture started descending at this point), to represent what I had always viewed, and in some way opposed, as the traditional face of western society was actually part of a growth process. I came to the realisation that I would never properly grow up and become a fully actualised person without committing to responsibility - be it a long-term relationship or children or something else - and these rites of passage represented those commitments.

So there I stood, amidst the festivities, facing a future of continuing post-adolescence. I saw myself, at eighty, and it worried me. Talk about being stuck between a rock and a hard place. Run forward and embrace the social notion of partnership that I have always struggled with, or remain in stasis, without growth. So I did what any logical minded person would do. I drank.

Drink can blur the edges but it cannot stop the tradition of the bouquet being thrown. Although at this wedding there were two bouquets as there were two brides. One tradition stared stony faced at the other tradition. It was a show down. Would I, the stalwart non-participant, engage in what I had previously viewed as a symbol of women's acquiescence and submission to a larger patriarchal tyranny?

Yes I would.

I put down my glass. Shoved people aside. Shouted at my sister and my new sister-in-law that they must aim their bouquets at me. Missed the first one. Complained loudly to the crowd. Went for the rugby tackle approach for the second bouquet. Which I caught. And somewhere I hoped the Molecule of Destiny was listening, because the feminist had landed and she wanted commitment.

knock knock

Don't mind me. Just tiptoe-ing back to my blog. Cough. No time has passed at all. Nope. I don't have commitment issues. I mean what is err... six months in the bigger picture? It is a mere blip on this wonderful place we call the universe. (Dodging through use of optimism - excellent tool discovered by watching politicians.) I am back. I am also front, up and down. I have been taking a really expensive treatment for my Crohn's and have been a superduperbusinesswhirlpool oh-my-god-where-does-she-get-the-energy person. So I have my excuses. That and the fact a blog means commitment and I am not sure I know how to commit. Although I could probably commit myself to an insane asylum. Or I could commit hara kiri. (Leave me while I wander down the lanes of language nuance.)

I was asked if I had read 'The Satanic Verses'. (It was a relative - around eighty, wild and a Marxist. At some point I should introduce you to my family.) I told her that I don't read newspapers anymore. In my world, newspapers are the Satanic Verses. Local news? Makes you want to emigrate. International news? Makes you want to change species. I don't know if it is because communication has opened up so much that all is revealed, or because our world is galloping along to a biblical conclusion. I do know it's giving me an ulcer and I have enough of those.