back at last
I have been lost from this blog for a couple of months, due to technical problems. Glad to be back. I will be publishing my Zone Notes here for those who want them. Most recent one after our son's wedding.
Wedding Garment
Notes From Zone 4
Occasional Writing From Blayney Colmore
October 5, 2005
Our youngest child, the male child among four sisters, was married Saturday in Seattle. Amidst the sublime events was slipped further proof of the charmed existence of boys when surrounded by loving girls. And the astonishing resourcefulness of young people in the incredible shrinking world.
At noon on the day of the wedding his mother offered to iron his shirt. He directed her to his closet. She looked but couldn’t find it. He looked and realized he had brought the wrong clothes bag when he left home in Portland, the bag with his wedding suit and shirt.
His sisters sprang into action, as they now had several times during the weekend, making place cards, cooking meals, stapling photos, clucking sympathetically over each new glitch, and now combing the yellow pages for places that wouldn’t require leaving the island, to find a shirt and suit. He faded quietly into the background, seemingly to grieve. The first new suit he had ever owned, bought for this day, costing more than he was accustomed to paying for a month’s rent, hanging in his closet three hours south.
His sisters came forward with several options, all seemingly doable by the 5pm wedding. He announced that he had it wired. He’d called friends who were 40 minutes into the three hour drive, who had agreed to turn back and go to his house where the landlord would open the door and they would drive the suit to Seattle.
It was now 1pm and there was a three hour drive and a ferry ride between the couriers and the ceremony on Bainbridge Island. His sisters fussed, he remained outwardly unruffled.
At 5 we all gathered in a native American lodge where, as a Kiana shaman blessed the four corners of the sacred space in which the vows were to be exchanged, sprinkling tobacco to mark the boundaries within which the bridal couple would stand, lightning and thunder shook the place to the rafters, announcing the solemnity of the occasion, and a deluge baptized the moment. Later the shaman told me he always calls on the three great spirits, but they rarely answer so powerfully.
And from the eaves stepped the groom, wearing, for the first time, the suit. His bride came forward on the arms of her mother and father in a dress so beautiful it took away the breath of everyone in the lodge, not one of whom must have been aware of the groom’s suit.
© 2005 Blayney Colmore
Wedding Garment
Notes From Zone 4
Occasional Writing From Blayney Colmore
October 5, 2005
Our youngest child, the male child among four sisters, was married Saturday in Seattle. Amidst the sublime events was slipped further proof of the charmed existence of boys when surrounded by loving girls. And the astonishing resourcefulness of young people in the incredible shrinking world.
At noon on the day of the wedding his mother offered to iron his shirt. He directed her to his closet. She looked but couldn’t find it. He looked and realized he had brought the wrong clothes bag when he left home in Portland, the bag with his wedding suit and shirt.
His sisters sprang into action, as they now had several times during the weekend, making place cards, cooking meals, stapling photos, clucking sympathetically over each new glitch, and now combing the yellow pages for places that wouldn’t require leaving the island, to find a shirt and suit. He faded quietly into the background, seemingly to grieve. The first new suit he had ever owned, bought for this day, costing more than he was accustomed to paying for a month’s rent, hanging in his closet three hours south.
His sisters came forward with several options, all seemingly doable by the 5pm wedding. He announced that he had it wired. He’d called friends who were 40 minutes into the three hour drive, who had agreed to turn back and go to his house where the landlord would open the door and they would drive the suit to Seattle.
It was now 1pm and there was a three hour drive and a ferry ride between the couriers and the ceremony on Bainbridge Island. His sisters fussed, he remained outwardly unruffled.
At 5 we all gathered in a native American lodge where, as a Kiana shaman blessed the four corners of the sacred space in which the vows were to be exchanged, sprinkling tobacco to mark the boundaries within which the bridal couple would stand, lightning and thunder shook the place to the rafters, announcing the solemnity of the occasion, and a deluge baptized the moment. Later the shaman told me he always calls on the three great spirits, but they rarely answer so powerfully.
And from the eaves stepped the groom, wearing, for the first time, the suit. His bride came forward on the arms of her mother and father in a dress so beautiful it took away the breath of everyone in the lodge, not one of whom must have been aware of the groom’s suit.
© 2005 Blayney Colmore
posted by Blayney at 12:26 AM
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