dry grass singing

in good hands

[for Ben and Mels, with apologies for the very purple prose]


Watching a spate of close friends' weddings take place, one after another, and anticipating The Next Big One (a beach party, complete with SPG outfits - the horror! - and seaside salsa), it's almost inevitable that my thoughts should turn to luurrve sweet luurrve, and marriage, and other generally soppy yet life-changingly momentous things that are not really soppy at all once you really start thinking about them.

(How i love the way talking about the things that matter is always so difficult, and sometimes just so darned... embarrassing. i love the way we hem and haw, stumble over our words, gird our feelings in layers of see-through irony, politely avert our eyes and collectively pretend that the irony is doing its job of concealing how much we really care.)

When Ben and Mels got married, something changed for me, quietly, almost imperceptibly. Even now, i still don't know exactly how it happened, and can only guess at why it happened, but the world suddenly took on a different tone. A warmer, brighter, happier tone. If life could be seen in colours, i would call it a bright, creamy, sunshiny yellow, shot through with shades of terracotta and burnt sienna.

Part of this, no doubt, was simply because it was the most enjoyable wedding i've ever attended. A peacefully busy morning spent with old friends at the bride's place, a beautifully simple church ceremony in the afternoon, and a smashingly fun dinner to top it all off. Great food, great company, great music (the food arriving accompanied by the strains of the 'Star Wars' theme, the couple walking into the ballroom, first to Bach's 'Air On A G-String', then to 'Yellow' by Brit band Coldplay; the friends-of-the-bride with our almost-too-sweet choral rendition of 'We've Only Just Begun'; MW hamming it up onstage with his deep-sexy-baritoned version of 'I've Got A Crush On You' accompanied by Dom-the-Human-Trumpet). And the after-dinner round-the-piano vocal-jamming session: Grace improvising, Brando doing his trademark Kermit, John showing off, the rest of us laughing and singing and fooling around and acting like we didn't have the sense we were born with. For just that one evening, we were high on life, drunk on youth, absolutely, utterly in the moment - happy, like a profusion of fresh spring flowers suddenly bursting brilliantly, unashamedly into bloom.

But that's not even half the story. After all, a wedding is just that - a wedding. White lace and promises, and a lifetime ahead in which to keep them. The first in a whole series of projects both big and small that the couple will have to undertake together, till death do them part. A fait accompli that marks the official institution of the world that the couple will have to build together, minute by minute, word by word, deed by deed. The burden of hope can seem almost too heavy to bear.

Yet, watching the newly-weds go about their tasks as host and hostess of the biggest party of their lives, i could not help but feel that this burden was something they would not only be able to shoulder, but that in their hands it would no longer be a burden, that it would become something strong, lasting, and beautiful. Ultimately inexplicable, this quiet confidence - in our fallen world, can adherence to any kind of hope be anything but inexplicable, be called anything but faith? So i will call it faith - this belief that they will succeed where the alchemists of old failed, that they will take the dross of everyday life, with all its litany of joys and frustrations, laughter and tears, and turn it into the gold of a lifetime lived together in a deep and growing love.

i am not one who is given to easy optimism. Over the years i have become perhaps a little too conscious of humankind's prodigious creativity when it comes to making a mess of things. Consider the amount of damage just one person can inflict on the world around him. Then take that and multiply it by two, and what you have is just a fraction of the total damage two people can do collectively, to each other and to the world at large. You can prove this mathematically. It's exponential. So it was with a sense of glad surprise that i found myself believing, wholeheartedly, uncynically, that this was one thing that would not become The Next Big Screw-Up. Nay, i don't just believe it, i know it. i know it in the same way that i knew Ben and Mels were going to get married, even when they first started dating, all those years ago. And this knowledge is all the more precious because it's given me the faith that with God's help, there are things that transcend even our human propensity towards error and entropy.

It is a good and joyful thing, always and everywhere, to know that the people you most care about are happy and well. i'd like to say for the record, with total, unironic sincerity, that i am thankful that one of my closest friends is in the good hands of a good man, and that he in turn is in the good hands of a good woman. And that the years they have together ahead of them are safely in good hands too.

posted by eothen @ 11:49 PM