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Joyce Kiefer |
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 Phyllis, the bride; Barbara and our Joyce at the wedding, making a fashion statement. |
Going to a distant wedding,
they forget their outfits
of TheColumnists.com
Four hours into our drive to Portland, Oregon, for a wedding, my husband interrupts the audio book “A Crack in the Edge of the World” to announce, “We forgot the garment bag.” The bag contains our wedding clothes.
Bad things happen when you don’t wear
the right thing to a wedding. Matthew 22:13 consigns the improperly
dressed wedding guest to darkness where there is weeping and
gnashing of teeth. There is also the embarrassment factor of
showing up in crop pants, T-shirt, and rubber sandals, while
recalling that you and the bride were required to wear hats to
Mass when you grew up. From Age 13 on, you added heels and gloves.
The scariest thing is that leaving the clothes behind shows the
crack of senility in me as well as Bill. Whenever we planned
a trip, I used to type lists of what to take. I gave that up
when I needed glasses in order to read the list. The glasses
were always lost.
Advancing age has given me the power to make things disappear.
Glasses vanish right out of my hands.
So, I memorize what we need and our packing proceeds systematically. Part of the process is forgetting a few things. About a block from our house, Bill asks, “What have we forgotten?” I mumble a comment about oxymorons and then suddenly shout, “My sun glasses!” or “The camera!” We turn around. But we both know that past the point of no return, something major will turn up left behind.
I dislike shopping under pressure and Bill hates to shop, period. In order to turn a lemon situation into lemonade, I want to find replacement wedding outfits on sale that will be assets to our wardrobes, not duplications. I call the friends we planned to spend the night with in Eugene and ask directions to the nearest shopping mall. They send us to one with a low price chain department store.
We start with the men’s department.
“Help me find something!” Bill begs helplessly.
“After I find something for myself,” I gnash through my teeth.
For an hour I try on everything that might show propriety. But all I find are tops and skirts designed for women in delayed adolescence. No dresses at all, let alone ones with jackets. As I stomp away in despair, I notice a black acetate skirt with swirls of confetti dots and a long-sleeved matching top that tied at the waist like a summer shirt. I try it on. I know it will work with the knit top from the sports outfit I packed along. Hey, what’s wrong with dressing like 20-something? I ask myself in exhaustion. I pull out my credit card. Now it’s time to help Bill.
He, of course, has found nothing. He started by looking at blazers. None fit his long arms and the prices deepened his guilt.
Our friends relax us with wine and cheese served in their lush garden. After dinner along with a tour of the city rose garden, they include a stop at Macy’s .
After trying on more clothes, I’m reassured the confetti dots are meant for me. Bill decides to substitute a long-sleeved shirt for a blazer. Does he try the shirt on? No, he chooses not to trouble the clerk to remove the pins.
The day before the wedding we settle at our hotel in downtown Portland. Bill removes hundreds of pins from his new shirt and tries it on. The not-long-enough sleeves make him look like his clothes shrunk in the rain. And it isn’t raining. We walk to the heart of town despite what passes for a heat wave in the Northwest, reach Pioneer Square, and eyeball the surrounding shops. And there it is--the elegant Nordstrom’s Department Store--with a huge banner announcing its Half-Yearly Sale. We find stacks of long-sleeved shirts with sleeve lengths in micro-increments. The clerk cheerfully removes the pins from the shirts Bill likes so he can check the length and get a full sense of the color. He choses the color purple.
We both receive compliments at the wedding.
Barbara, a childhood friend of Phyllis the Bride and I, also traveled from the San Francisco Bay Area for the big event. How could she and I not celebrate our friend’s happiness after the trials life had brought–a son with Downs, a husband who died years ago after a series of medical errors, a daughter with personal problems of her own? Phyllis’ new husband is a widower whose daughter lost her husband a few days before the wedding. Neither bride nor groom have any illusions about happily ever after. Yet they hold hands and plunge with love into whatever future is left to them.
I feel a sense of shared courage wash over Bill and me. No matter how often we forget to pack everything, we’ll take these road trips as long as it’s safe and we love them. Improvisation hones the mind. And we’ll plan extended travel, even with the strong possibility of someone dear passing away while we’re gone. Time runs out for us as well.
As I compliment Barbara on her dark two-piece pantsuit with white trim, she says, “Look closer. Instead of packing the navy blue pants that match my jacket, I grabbed these black ones!”
©2006 by Joyce Kiefer. The illustration is the property of the author. All rights reserved. This column first posted Aug. 14, 2006.
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