Something Blue

One of the first books I saw in the Borders at Dulles Airport Thursday* was The Married Guy’s. It was with more curiosity than pain or urge to stalk that I picked it up – the book is about a topic I love.

First page: “To [name of his wife.]”

Ouch.

I put the book down.

Then I wondered if, with his obsession with all things American, I suddenly might hear from The Fig after the terror plot was unveiled.

I didn’t.

I thought about him and The Married Guy all weekend, though.

At my sister’s shower Sunday – more on that later – the table decorations were mini bamboo plants in little pots that said things like “happiness,” “prosperity,” and “love.” I had “prosperity” in front of me but traded it for a “love” to take back to London.

“I need all the help I can get,” I joked to my sister.

She said: “I know, right?”

* * *

When we were growing up, my sister frequently used to wonder which one of us would get married first. I didn’t – without knowing why, exactly, I was sure it would be her.

Still, it is one thing to expect it and another thing actually to deal with it. I should have expected my sister would go crazy, with her More Than Two Months’ Rent in My Flat Gown, her Vera Wang invitations and earnest discussion of wax seals for them (yes, wax seals!), her Two More Months’ Rent Worth of Skincare and Makeup Products (I spotted La Prairie in her bathroom yesterday). Mostly, I find her Bridezilla tendencies funny.

At her shower yesterday, I talked to a couple of her friends I knew well and then busied myself making – as tradition apparently mandates (or so my sister’s wedding-obsessed or already-married friends tell me) – the hat covered with bows from the shower presents that the bride has to wear to the rehearsal dinner. I watched her open flour sifters and oil and vinegar bottles and things I didn’t recognize and she didn’t until recently. It seems her fiance is the cook in the family, and actually went out the other weekend to create a registry for the two of them at Sur La Table. I listened to her joke about this and busied myself cutting ribbons and affixing them to a paper plate with tape.

Dear God, are there some napkins I can fold at the wedding? Or maybe a really, really complicated crossword puzzle required by Jewish law?

Seriously, I was still mostly OK with everything until I spotted the salad bowl we used in my family for as long as I can remember on her counter, and these blue and white flour and sugar canisters of my grandmother’s behind them.

“Did you take the salad bowl from Dad’s basement?” I asked.

“Yeah, I needed some stuff,” she said, my grandmother’s diamond glittering on her left hand in the new setting my sister and her fiance created for it. “I can’t find anything in there, anyway.”

My mother and grandmother were always so careful about everything being equal, or as equal as possible, particularly gifts. But now my mother is gone and my grandmother -- after years of watching all her friends’ grandkids get married -- is thrilled to be around for the marriage of one of her own, and, she thinks, probably the only one she’ll see. Still, I couldn’t help wondering what else my sister took or has gotten – what other things I might have wanted and for which there is no equal waiting for me someday.

On top of everything else, it is hard to take.

*yes, I travelled to the US from London on Thursday, and yes, it was not fun. I had to write about it for my employer’s web site and I don’t think there’s much more to say. Oh, except: My original piece was much better than the edited one.