Caution: This column lacks the usual amount of snark. It is about family, marriage and love, so if those awful Chicken Soup for the Soul books make you gag (like they do me), skip this week’s column and come back when I am in my right mind.
My nephew Neal got married last weekend to a beautiful woman named Molly in Milwaukee. Amazingly, all of my siblings and their spouses made it to the wedding. You would think this would be no big deal, but the reality is, with a total of 12 people in the crew, someone usually isn’t there. For my son Jack’s wedding, my sister-in-law Cookie was in Denver with her daughter, who had just delivered a baby (also named Jack). So we always seem to be a few people short of our dozen. I am not sure if it is because everyone likes Neal better than any of the other nieces and nephews (kidding … or maybe not), but we all showed up and even paid for hotel rooms.
The wedding was Saturday evening, which meant we had an entire day to do whatever we wanted. I, of course, just wanted to be with my siblings. You see, as the youngest, I have a horrible case of FOMO: fear of missing out. I am jealous because I can’t participate in their discussions of living in the ‘old house.’ I wasn’t born yet. They tell me stories of shoveling coal, running around the woods, hitting each other with lead pipes and various other shenanigans. Whenever I ask what mom and dad were doing, my two older brothers respond, “Drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes.” Now, we did have a ‘free-range’ kind of childhood, but so did everybody in the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s. And yes, my parents did drink coffee and smoke cigarettes, but some of my brothers’ stories are a little hard to believe. Anyway, I am all about making new memories with my siblings, which might seem strange given we range in age from 59 to 72. A few of us are past our prime, if you know what I mean.
I decided, with encouragement from my niece Kim (probably to see how badly we could screw it up), that we should all take a trolley and walk to a brewery for lunch. My sister Teresa and her husband David were the longest holdouts until I said, “Pleeaasse! It will be fuuunnn.” They finally agreed, I suspect to stop me from embarrassing myself further. Everything was fun. No one got lost, no one complained. I had a new memory.
That night at the wedding, we were all together at one table. Now, I’d like to say I was a few martinis into the night, but I was stone-cold sober, so I can’t blame my emotions on the booze: I looked around the table and realized that everyone there had been married forever, Carey and I the least at 35 years, Mary and John the longest at 50. And I could feel myself starting to tear up. This was my family. I really didn’t need any more stories. I had plenty. There was so much love around that table, I thought my heart would burst. Thankfully, my brother Tim got up to dance, and Teresa and I followed him, so I could forget how much that dozen meant to me. If they knew, well, they likely would mock me, which would only mean they felt the same way.