1-Adam-12, We Have a Domestic Dispute…

We were all enjoying the quiet stillness of the post-wedding gloaming. Nothing to check on a list. No appointments to keep. Nothing to decide, count, arrange, approve, pay for, comply with, stuff, fold, tie, paste, or squeeze into a specially designed undergarment.

A return to relative normalcy. But not Relative Normalcy.

The O’Malley-Scungili Extravaganza – and its runway – all 730 days plus one for Leap Year – had left the Earth scorched. Its plant life parched. The creatures in its path spent and clinging to life by their French Manicured fingernails. It was like the green fog that Moses conjured up in The Ten Commandments. Only pink.

J. was hoping that an olive branch had managed to survive the apocalypse and was ripe for the picking. Convinced that now that the levy-breaking pressure of the Big Day had subsided and no one was going to feel compelled to square off and take to their respective corners, that no one was going to have to give in the to the other’s logic or (God forbid) change their mind, or have to admit to their own defective reasoning in a fit of snots and tears and hand wringing, --- that there might be some enlightened, peaceable recognition of what the other side’s position had been.

I am sure there were Hatfields and McCoys with the same optimistic pipedream.

For J.’s sake, I hoped that there would be some covert or implied acknowledgement – whispered in the kitchen, in hushed tones, concealed from view by an open refrigerator door – that Sheila et al had been wrong not to consider his feelings about who his family was, and who among them would be invited. Wrong to expect so much understanding, and commitment and contribution from him with only narrow-minded inconsideration in return.

I had said out loud (and admittedly, at times, overly loudly!) that I understood their position. It was insulting to me and hurtful, personally, but intellectually I could grasp the logic, though I believed it to be flawed. Emotionally it missed the target – and would for our children. My decision had to favor the emotional side of the equation. Not some technicality or Bride’s Magazine how-to column. Truly – had no one been able to grasp that? Or was the failure to see it just a convenient act?

But with a graduation on the horizon and celebrations to be planned, there were relationships to massage. Perhaps resuscitate. Crow to eat. Swords to run on. Who would be cast in what roles and what the chances of survival are remain full blown mysteries to me.

I was curious but not kill-the-cat curious. I could live with the unknown for a long time. The Kennedys did. Why not me?