Westover Visits the Quality Inn

It's not super often that the Westovarians can congregate in one place. Fortunately, the very last of our number (except for Annie) got hitched this weekend in the beautiful non-nautical town of Steamboat Springs, CO.

Dugas and I were wedding dates for the weekend leaving our men at home and incredibly lucky in Austin, TX. Due to an unfortunate Bowers-Olschner mix-up, our original lodging plans fell through at the last minute. Annie booked one of the few rooms she could find in Steamboat, close to the wedding. We were to call the Quality Inn home for Saturday night.

This particular room had a king-sized bed and a Jacuzzi. Tired from dancing and drinking, and a little happy/sad from giving away our beloved Kevka. We decided to use our hotel room for all it was worth.

I was expecting this Jacuzzi to be in a semi-public pool-type area, and when Annie said it came with the room, I thought at most the bath tub would have a few jets in it. As it turns out, the Jacuzzi wasn't even in the bathroom, but rather set up on a small pedestal in the bedroom portion next to the master bed. The bed itself was gorged with pillows and had posts that wound intricately up to the ceiling.

Annie, I think, associated Jacuzzis with bubbles, instead of air bubbles, she thought soap bubbles. She was perplexed when she couldn't find the bubble bath solution.

"I'll ask the front desk," she said and got on the phone.

The front desk, laughing, said they had never had someone ask for bubble bath before and asked if the little shampoos might work. Annie said that we'd give them a try, and when they asked how many she wanted she said three or four. They gave her five.

The shampoos weren't making great bubbles as she poured in all five of them and filled the Jacuzzi with water, but it was sudsy and passable. We turned the heater on in our room as it was kind of chilly and changed into our swimsuits.

I didn't quite realize what we had done until Annie found the button for the jets and what had been a slightly iridescent tub of water became an aggressively foaming tower of bubbles.

The jets were (quite predictably) injecting air into the mix and causing suds to build and go everywhere. As Annie slipped in a tub a serpent of displaced bubbles equal to the volume of her body slid out onto the carpeted floor.

We could control the foam column by simply turning off the jets, but the button had been covered and lost, and we had to push piles of bubbles away from the edge and against the wall in order to find it.

We received a CD from Kevyn and L.J.'s wedding of what we assumed were slideshow pictures of their love and lives. We thought we'd watch it from our bubble bath. I set up my laptop on the bed and played, what ended up being, just the music from their ceremony.

Now, it is not the easiest thing to rid yourself of water and bubbles enough to touch electronic devices. So we ended up sitting in our mound of bubbles, next to our king-sized bed, in our sultry room, listening to love songs.

It might have been the most (accidentally) romantic evening of my life.

Carrie and Alec and the Rest of Us

I went to Carrie's wedding two weekends ago.

Carrie: former Westovarian, masters in teaching, someone told her once that she had a map of Ireland on her face, pale skin, green eyes, light freckles, long tousled curly black hair.

It's easy to forget that these weddings are more than just a weekend occurrence. They can start feeling like a dime a dozen, Whitworth ones anyway, during the summer. Commonly overheard in jocular comparison: -- "I have n number of weddings to attend this month" -- "Ah yes, I have n + 1."

Whitworth: liberal arts Christian college, 2,000 students, contained dreaded cliche: "ring by spring", as in the spring of one's senior year, the ring traditionally containing a diamond, the ring worn on the left hand, the ring featured in personal pages on the Internet, the ring shown (palm out) next to gaping mouth, the ring on hand resting on other (slightly bigger) hand and photo fading blurry toward the edges.

It's easy to forget that (for the parties involved) the wedding is something momentous. I had drunk too much the night before.

I have a friend whose (not from Whitworth, needed me to clarify "ring by spring") primary objection with marriage is his realism.

"I am a realist." -- friend not from Whitworth

I expanded:

Statistically in the United States half of marriages end in divorce. I am told that the Whitworth statistic for marriages is slightly worse. Moreover, it is unrealistic to expect people -- even in a sustained marriage -- not to break their vows, not to be selfish, not to continue the habits and pleasures and preoccupations that they had before getting married.

I do not experience an emotional connection to Mitch's happiness, at least not an immediate one. I feel immediately what I want, like or don't like. I evaluate the consequences my actions have to my future and present comfort. Having my emotions and my thoughts hardwired into what affects my husband might not be something that ever happens. Realistically.

Carrie married a man named Alec. I don't think they'll admit to this, but the first time they met* was at Westover. We were making dinner during one of the late summer weeks before school started. Alec and some other guests were there. We cooked applesauce into everything we made. We made applesauce bread and chicken and margaritas. The bottom of our over-full blender broke, and its green-yellow contents spilled out at enough speed to coat the counters and floor and bottom half of the refrigerator. Carrie and Alec's relationship has been too refined and traditional and romantic to have admittedly started with a kitchen awash and sticky with pulverized apple and half a bottle of tequila (as I am here positing it did).

*met: that time that they first found a little interest in each other, seeds of thoughts, you know: all that romance stuff.

Alec is tall, has a big smile (his lips extending beyond the edges of his outside teeth so there are spaces in the two corners of his lips where he could potentially put things), and has short tousled curly black hair.

I sat in the church with my four-o-clock hangover and watched Carrie walk down the aisle in her white dress with her black hair and her green eyes, looking beautiful. I remembered that she was my good friend and that a wedding meant something, that hers was not a dime a dozen, and that it was no longer spring.

Carrie and Alec promised to be each other's biggest support. They promised to love each other, to be faithful, and to care for each other*.

*This promise extended to an indefinate time in the future when they might not look so great in white or in a tux. When they are old fat ugly bitter sunspotted toothless, for all I know.

And I suspect that a draw of this marriage thing (openly for the realists and probably secretly for everyone else) is that at some point the promise of being faithful will be fufilled not from constancy but from lack of opportunity. We will lose our looks and men will stop checking out our butts and the women with the butts will stop laughing (at least earnestly) at our jokes. And we will be old and we want someone (someone!) who is roped into that decrepidness with us.

I know I am selfish, I am needy, I am manipulative, I am emotionally defunct. Just ask the people I live with.

So as Carrie walked, with her white and the flower in her hair and her father and her intentions, towards the man with the gaps in his smile (and she in enormous wedges so that when he kissed her as his bride he had to lean down four inches instead of eight), I thought about how unlikely it was that for generations people have been walking down that aisle. People have known for centuries what I know about myself and what my realist friend knows about himself, and yet they line up to make these unrealistic promises. Faithfulness to, honesty towards, and support for another person even when it's inconvieniant to one's self. Even when they didn't hardwire my emotions into anybody but me. So brave to get all dressed up and to promise in front of other people those things.

And I thought that what I needed was to put on that lying white and walk down that aisle every single day.

It reminds me of what my friend John the Lutheran says about sin. And about how we need to die to it every day. Hang on that cross every day.

I think then maybe I could get somewhat close to working on that hardwiring. Get somewhere close to loving another person. I've never been a very good realist.

Having a Wedding is a lot like Turning Five

Five is around the age where birthdays were the most important. You were old enough to realize what was going on and young enough that they were the event of the year. It was your special day, and you got cake. Hey, maybe even a party dress.

I’m taking some time right now to visit the burgeoning land of Starbucks and read over an email Jill sent me. (Jill was my youth pastor in high school, presently my good friend, and the person officiating (Tweet!) the ceremony.) It’s called “Service of Christian Marriage With Options” and lists choices for traditional declarations of intent, relinquishments, vows, and exchanges of rings. In true five-year-old-birthday-party fashion, I’ve been paying a lot more attention to the hats and kazoos of the reception than to the important parts.

I’ve been thinking about what you can honestly promise someone in a situation like this. Promise too little and you absolutely depress the pants off people. Promise too much and I’ll be retching on the altar (or in my seat if it’s you getting married).

Kevyn Stokes, reputable source and fellow Westovarian, told me that Whitworth professor Rob Clark said the following about marriage:

You can’t promise that you’re going to like ‘em. You can’t control that. You can only promise things that are in your control, and the only thing you can control is that you’ll be there.

“I’m not usually that impressed by him, but I was like, ‘Way to go, Rob.’” Kevyn said in reflection.

I promise I won’t make you go to the dentist’s by yourself, and I will commiserate when you get speeding tickets. I’ll be present with you whether I like it or not.

Each of the options in Jill’s email mentions love. There’s that problem of love. Annie said to me one day in a fit of epiphany, “I don’t even really know what love is.” Pop-Christian culture wants to simplify love—love is a choice—which stinks of a homosexuality rebuttal to me. Hallmark wants to make some bucks off it. Regular pop culture wants to mystify romantic love and elevate it to the status of destiny and life purpose. And biology traces it to our hormones and our sense of smell.

And I can’t help thinking getting married will feel like turning five. I’ll wake up on my birthday being five-years old, but I’ll feel a lot like I did when I was four years old. Not any different, actually. I won’t feel married (kabloomers). I won’t be any less selfish or any more loving than I am now. I won’t be any better at sharing my living space or being helpful. And I’ll still be just as pointlessly competitive. But I hope by the time I turn six years old or twenty years old, I’ll have figured out how to be five.

THE Dress, I guess

Dress shopping, I’d heard horror stories of it taking months. People travel to different cities, hit up boutiques, mass chains, and the Internet. The Internet! Full of pages and pages of models in white dresses and the thought – I won’t look good in any of these. Only models get married.

But I try any way. It’s no pressure, really. I mean, it’s not like the dress is something people even really take note of.... people being 200 of your closest friends, acquaintances, family friends and their plus ones who are all looking at you. Not to mention that you are going to be professionally photographed for the first time since basketball senior year of high school.

I’ll go ahead and skip lengthy descriptions of tulle heaven in plastic wrap – white, beads! a mannequin with her sweet-heart strapless down around her hips, a customer in scrubs with tattoos on her arms, and shoes and veils. Purity is gaudy, I guess.

And I’m in the dressing room with a slip, a poof slip, and a low-backed corset top. Sales-lady Heather is going to help me with the dress, but she’s let me fend for myself with the under garments (and I’d call them something more crass than under garments, but the way they hold up and lace down and pack in is truly medieval). The corset thing’s a problem: it has a dozen eyelet hooks running up the back. There is no way to both wrench the thing shut around my torso and match and hook all those suckers unless I put it on backwards. So I do this, and the little bra part cups my scapula, and I’d swing it around but it’s a corset... thing, and it has ribbing and grip tape and apparently brides are supposed to look as conical as possible.

I like the first dress I try; my mom keeps asking me if I can breathe ok. I can breathe... ok. It takes both her and SL Heather to zip it all the way up. It reminds me more of an Easter dress I’d wear as a little girl—come to think of it, I got baptized in a similar outfit—than a wedding dress. But can we talk for a second about how wedding dresses tend to be glaringly ugly? They either look like tablecloths or curtains or doilies or lingerie or cupcakes. Women who wouldn’t so much embroider the pockets of blue jeans insist on having their busts covered in rhinestones for the big day. Weird. Brides, I think, have an unusual love for their breasts (push-up sweetheart tops galore) and for flowers and bows and not men... I guess.

But I like the first one ok. My dad walks in the store while I have it on. He doesn’t say anything, but I can tell he likes it ok too. He approves of the feather headpiece I’m wearing that my mom doesn’t care for (and he hasn’t even seen the Sex and the City movie). We practice walking around the store—me on his arm. Mom thinks we might not fit down the isle; it’s a cupcake dress.

So we buy it, and the whole thing wasn’t so bad. (Well, my parents buy it. I’m so grown up?) The dress actually has pockets... for snacks or rubbers I guess. And the manicured man behind the register says it looked elegant even though I think he means baptismal or like a toga married (ha, marriage! everybody’s doing it) an air pump.