I keep telling everyone that the wedding is November 28. That seems like a reasonable fact to share with others, except that the wedding is actually November 29! At least that is what our invitations say. I am sure there is an interesting psychological reason for mis-remembering the date of the wedding. I think it's probably huge progress that I have the year and groom straight in my head. That's most important.
We just dropped my parents off at the airport, and I was very emotional about it. Right before we dropped them off we all went to the wedding reception/ceremony site to give my parents a tour. First of all, it's one of those very rare perfect summer days: nice breeze, 82 degrees, low humidity, and lots of happy sunshine. Days like today fill me with some kind of overwhelming emotion that may simply be gratitude, though it's hard to recognize since my fair city has the worst weather in the free world. My point is that this feeling is rare in the windy Midwest.
J and I showed my parents the different spaces in the site where we imagine we will do the ceremony, the reception and the cocktail hour. We haven't seen the space since it was remodeled in April. It looks really beautiful-- clean and classy and interesting. I am really excited. We aren't sure where exactly each portion of the night will take place, but it will be so fun to create the vision with J. My parents were great this weekend-- everything we showed them, they loved. They offered very few opinions about anything, having learned from my siblings' weddings that hurt feels can spark and snowball very quickly. They are happy for J and I to take the wedding ball and run with it.
I wish I could think of a better way to describe how I feel. It feels like the evening J and I spent in the Radisson in New Dehli after 2 weeks in India. I remember that evening-- we hung out at the Radisson before our midnight flight home-- sitting on a comfy couch processing everything we had just seen and done and eaten in the past 2 weeks. I feel a version of that fullness right now. It feels like I want to hold on to the feeling for a long while and savor how much feeling can really be held at once. Spending this weekend with my parents and J was honestly about as foreign to me as traveling to India. To be the daughter that has a wonderful partner and can take care of her parents-- that's like seeing an Elephant painted colorfully for Diwali just ambling down the street. This weekend's events included taking my mom to the Red Door Salon to have her hair styled by my stylist as practice for the wedding weekend. We also got pedicures. For the first time ever in my life, I treated my mother. It felt so good. The part that was especially moving was that it was the first time ever in her life that anyone had treated her to such pampering.
There is so much to say but it's so disappointing to see my feelings diluted as a factual record of what we did; where we went; what we ate; who said what. It's all too much. I still have no idea what to say about our trip to India. It was so hard-- one of the most challenging things I have ever done. And it was amazing, and I am so grateful I did it, and it was really overwhelming in every single way. That's how I feel about this weekend with my parents, and I barely left my own zip code.
Now I am at work paying the price for taking Friday off, as well as most of the weekend. It was worth it. Someday I may write about how Jeff and my parents dropped me off at work before they went to the airport, but when I got into the lobby of my office, I felt so grief-stricken to be alone and totally unwilling to be done with the weekend and the visit. I raced out the door and screamed at J to stop and let me back in. I rode with them to the airport and said another round of goodbyes to my parents and got to process the weekend with J. Or at least, start the process.
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