There is Love

The Wedding---oh, the wedding! T’was beautiful, all of it: the bride, the groom, the dress, the flowers, the cake, and especially the friends and family that came to share it all with us. And---special bonus feature of the venue we used—NO ELK. Anywhere.

Weddings are a beautiful time, just in general. A gathering of beloved people, coming together to celebrate Love and Life and Ever After. I look around at all the faces that smile back at me, noting the faces of those whose wedding I attended not that long ago, those who have now been married months, a year, two years, eight years, longer. I see brand new babies, still with that “new baby smell” as Shane would say, “That’s a fresh one.” There are toddlers and kids and a Mona Lisa smile that tells me more love will soon be made tangible in this world and my heart is so full it leaks out of my eyes.

We celebrate in all the usual ways, with ceremony and dancing, with food and drink and-- in addition to cake--- there are lemon tarts that the mother of the Bride made with such love they melt in your mouth.

At dusk the lights hung in the orchard trees wink on and the candles in the floral centerpieces are lit and all is magic. I know that work is Love, made visible. I know the love that went into the planning, and the creation of all of this, how a village of loved ones came together to make this happen.

Late in the evening, I take a moment to myself, under the stars, my face lifted to the heavens, not quite in prayer, not quite NOT; not really weeping although there are some tears. I am somewhere in between, standing under the sheltering sky, broken open.  Open, but not empty, my heart says what words cannot. And I stay there, until I can again dance.

There is a time, near the end, where my son wraps his arms around me in thanks, and in that moment, begins to weep. Other arms wrap around us, another son, then the third. Then the Bride and the other Beloveds, all of us Sumes, bereft of our Origin, we weep.

I am thankful for these tears; thankful my son can weep openly. His friends make a receiving line of open arms for him and they hold him fiercely. And long. And one after the other, until his tears are exhausted.

We weep as we rejoice, we weep as we mourn. We weep as we heal, and eventually, we dance.