That time I went to a wedding in CA---Part 2

                 

Strangely, to be in a rental car, is in some way to be in a foreign place. Since I won’t be traveling to Spain anytime soon, I have to take my comfort in leather seats, in agendas that are not already set. There is a simple pleasure in not knowing what will come next, what an afternoon or an evening will bring. This sort of pleasure diminishes as we age and our experiences become more narrowed or defined. 

                Arriving back at my dad’s house it becomes clear that there will be no time for the hike or the drive or the walk that we’d planned. There is only time to put on some nice boots, a cowboy hat and head back out onto the open road. On the drive to Saratoga I hear a song by Katie Perry that may or may not be called “Roar,” that my father and I had seen on the news night before as sung by a group of children in a children’s cancer hospital. One of those small blips of life that are seemingly available everywhere if you are willing to look closely enough at the vast swaths of internet where sadness and beauty are conjoined almost effortlessly. And, like the homeless person who asks you for a dollar on the street, you can merely watch it and say, what am I to do with this? 

At this point what I’ll do is immaterial because what it turns out I’ll do when I hear this song on the radio and start thinking of the children and the dying is cry. This is because I cry frequently when I’m alone, particularly in the car. Given an open road and a decent playlist, I think I’d cry daily. After this, as the sunlight pours down into the valley, and I drive down a narrow strip of highway between the foothills I have a moment where I am deeply thankful  to be alive. I cannot explain it, surely you’d had some of those moments yourself, perhaps daily, or you’ve at least read about them in a self-help book. Anyhow, as I’m driving I am fleetingly just really happy to be living and breathing and driving down the highway in the late afternoon light with the music playing and all the threads of the evening not yet woven together. 

I’ve considered writing self-help books. The only reason that I haven’t started is that I’m a deeply ungrateful person. My life is, by most objective standards, good, and yet I am always concerned that it is not better. I suspect, in the back of my mind that just having a couple of extra million dollars, or a novel written would really round things out. I don’t know what the market is for a self-help book that is constantly reminding you that though things are good, they could always be better. 

One of the things that I am grateful for is Saratoga, which is small, and quaint and cute. And as I’m driving up to the wedding venue I am going up one of those very steep hills in CA that people have put houses on, presumably to lob insults and pitch upon the peasants, only to watch the feudal system dissolve to their dismay, leaving them with houses and gardens perched on damn near inaccessible hills, I pass a sign that says I should shift into a lower gear. However, I have been upgraded to a Chrysler GTO 300. I’m fairly certain that by jamming my foot on the gas pedal I can practically fly up the hill, which turns out to be true and also acts as a good reminder that you should never buy a used rental car on the grounds that the people driving them are idiots just like you. 

Once inside, I park, call the wife and kids to pass the time and start looking for a bathroom. The pants are so tight that I swear they are pushing on my urethra, and I wind up going to the bathroom three times inside of thirty minutes. In the interim, I make polite conversation with a man in a wonderful top hat, who turns out to be the bride’s father about his work in the Forest Service around Quincy, where we lived for a year. He says that he’s loved working there, and I reflect on how people used to think my wife said foreign service instead of forest service when she worked there and would want to know where she was stationed. Anyhow, this particular gem of a story starts rattling around inside of my head, and I keep wondering when I should insert it into the conversation until I realize that the moment has passed, and no one wants to be reminded that they are not in the Foreign Service, in which I imagine you smoke large Turkish cigarettes and pass the time complaining to local diplomats about the heat and the coffee. 

At first, I walk up a gravel path and admire the Japanese gardens, the waterfalls and immaculately groomed bushes. I admire things and walk around, trying to look like any other person at the garden that day, except that I’m dressed up like a cowboy and am almost photo bombing all the cute couples and families who came here to enjoy the quiet beauty and presumably, my tight pants. After fifteen minutes or so I run out of reserves of standing contemplatively while looking at the garden. I am a product of the twenty first century and need distractions, a book, a notebook, an iPad, something to help me pass the time. I sneak back out to the entrance for a bathroom break. 

Afterwards I stand and wait in the gravel and see my first grade teacher, the groom’s mother, and my favorite childhood teacher, drive by. And as she arrives at the gate I’m prepared to say hi to her except that she walks right past me and it is her daughter who says hello and gives me a hug, at which point my old teacher says that she thought I was some deviant part of the bride’s family and not someone dressed up in costume. The interesting thing about the groom’s sister is that she’s only a year younger than I am, and yet, growing up as good friends with her brother it was and is my perception that she was at least three to five years younger than I was. And it’s funny how when you’re young, your perception of age can be so vastly skewed. That said, I spend the  rest of the weekend asking her how she’s liking her mid-twenties, because there is no way to keep yourself from becoming old than by constantly being surprised by how young other people are. I don’t suppose the fact that I sat in a rocking chair and insisted on doing some needlework during the wedding prep helped. 

Back at the wedding top, I’m waiting with the groom’s family for everyone else to arrive. And they do, dressed up as a hot dog, the mad hatter and a gun toting NRA hunter. And really, what else could anyone want? I’ll tell you what they could want, some Fireball. I received a half-glass of the liquor Fireball, a cinnamon whiskey that tastes almost exactly like the Scope flavor, and I’m fairly certain that you can, and I have, used it as mouthwash. Fireball is something I have once a year on our guy’s trips, and it has become emblematic of these weekends and actually brings to mind the fun of Nashville, and Austin, and Portland, and Kansas City in the way that a certain perfume or scent can remind you of an old love. Being reunited with a little bit of Fireball is being reunited with the fun we’ve already had, watching people dance impromptu to a song in Austin, the late nights and amazing bands in Nashville, the pictures we all posed for in the Rose Garden in Portland.  It is less a mouthwashy flavored whiskey than a sign that the good times are about to start rolling.