A Wedding: Part Two

An hour before the wedding it rained. Not a heavy rain, but the misty kind of rain that soaks everything in a matter of moments. The kind of misty rain that rests soggy on your hair so that when you shake your head, you look like a sprinkler.

I know this because we were walking the dogs before we dressed for the early evening wedding.

"I wonder if they'll move the wedding indoors?" I asked Ann as the rain dripped off my baseball cap.

"Hard to say," she laughed slightly. Ann does not worry. Even though it was not my wedding, I worried about the rain. It seemed like potential chaos to move 100 people from outdoors inside especially after so many months of planning and gardening.

The color theme of the wedding was, of all things, black and white. This gave me a couple of options for attire, but none felt right. This is always my struggle: How to feel like me in clothes that don't feel like me? Which begs to question why I bought them in the first place, but I think it has to do with the particular situation matching my particular clothes.

Remember, I don't usually go to weddings so my closet isn't filled with wedding options. Instead, I have a closet of work clothes and sweaters, khaki pants and fleece (a requirement for every good Pacific Northwestern lesbian).

So, while I liked my black pants and I even liked the rather low-cut muslin white shirt I wasn't quite sure they were wedding-proper. Still, this is what I chose to wear after tossing out the light blue shirt with the black pants, the blousy purple tencil shirt with the black pants, and the simple black t-shirt with the black pants. I suppose if I'd had a black skirt in my closet that would have all worked with any of the above shirts, but alas, I haven't had a black skirt in my closet since I was 9 and even then I can't be quite sure if I owned a skirt at all.

Once dressed, we pondered the dogs. Despite the walk with the dogs, only Rubin did his business. Ben, reluctant and nervous, had yet to pee even after a bowl of water and already a few hours at our house. We needed to pen him during the wedding and I worried that, after NOT peeing, Ben might decide to do so some other way.

Let me back up a bit. Ben is huge. When people see us walking down the street they often gasp. I'm not making this up. His head is large and his body stately and incredibly long. Older women with small dogs are known to cross the street fearing the large beast they see before them will attack, but Ben does not attack, at least not unless he is continuously and persistently provoked. And even then his attack is a loud bark.

Rubin tried on a number of occasions to provoke him. He'd fling his 25 pound curly body into Ben's back end punching his nose playful in every attempt to get Ben to play. But Ben only plays fetch and only with humans. He avoids other dogs. Goes out of his way to steer clear of them and despite Rubin's taunting, Ben refused to budge. Instead, he'd snarl a bit and then walk away locating the nearest human behind whom he could hide.

I've come to realize that Ben does not think he's a dog. I'm not sure what he thinks himself to be, but it is not a dog. So I worried that penning Ben up for three to four hours while we attended a wedding might lead to him pushing his crate halfway across the new bamboo floors in an attempt to get outside. He's clever that way. At one point in the afternoon, he found himself in the front yard where I caught him shoving his nose against the gate latch in an attempt to open it. I caught him just in time so I wouldn't put it past him to figure out a way to open the sliding glass door use his weight and the bulky pen.

These were my thoughts after he'd reluctantly entered his crate and looked mournfully at our black and white clad outfits as we headed out the door with pesky Rubin at our sides. Because Ben was hesitant to relieve himself, we arrived at the wedding with only moments to spare. Rubin stayed in the car, and we walked swiftly to the backyard where about 100 people stood clad in beautiful dresses and neatly pressed suits sipping wine and staring up at the clouds that only an hour before had dumped a significant amount of rain on the parade.

Before the wedding started, I searched for Steven to let him know that Ben was doing well and comfortably resting at home. Steven had been working hard for months to get the garden ready and to clean up every muddy tennis ball from behind every flowering bush and tree. Ben, obsessed with fetch, must have over a hundred tennis balls in the yard and Steven assured me that anyone would be hard-pressed to find them after his meticulous scouring. Nonetheless, once I found Steven, dressed in a beautiful black satin suit, we both laughed in disbelief as a tennis ball rolled out from under his legs towards me. We have no idea where it came from, but there it was, a sign from dog most certainly.

While I don't do many weddings, this one was particularly tender and moving. Phoebe is the daughter of our dear friends Doris and Steven (Ben's parents) and though Doris found Phoebe's dress to be a bit odd ("It looks like someone just ripped up fabric," Doris exclaimed), Phoebe was absolutely stunning as she walked down the staircase on her father's arm.

And while I don't do many weddings, none have ever made me misty-eyed though last night's was an exception. Phoebe's husband-to-be is named Steve and while he is a rather rowdy, beer-drinking frat-boy, he and Phoebe have overcome some huge hurdles (physical, medical, and historical) to find themselves under a wedding arch that they actually constructed themselves.

So when Steve walked through the garden to take his place at the alter, his eyes already wet with tears, I knew that this wedding just might make me cry. The tears came with the exchange of vows. Doris and Steven were married 40 years ago (same month) and Phoebe asked if she could use the same vows Steven had written for Doris way back in 1967.

I love Steven (Doris, too, but Steven is particularly wonderful in his kindness, sincerity, and wit). After hearing those vows, I gained a whole new respect for Steven not only as a man, but as a husband and a father. He loves his family and would move mountains to secure their happiness. It was apparent in the smile on his face as he escorted Phoebe; it was clear as he held his wife's hand through the ceremony; and it was even more true as the minister read the vows that both Phoebe and Steve repeated.

Meanwhile, through my tears, I'm worrying about Ben. (As for my clothes, I realized once Phoebe walked down the aisle, all eyes were on her and no one could give a hoot about my choices, ripped up fabric of a dress or not. Besides, the man next too me wore a knit shirt visibly stained and pants that reminded me of the 1970s.)

What was Ben doing now? I wondered. Had he peed in his crate? Was he whining and crossing his legs?

I stayed for dinner (tasty Indian food), but forgo the cake, making my apologies to the bride and groom, to Doris and Steven that I wanted to check in on Ben. They understood and thanked me and I raced home worried at what I might find.

At home, Ben was sound asleep in his pen. No urine, no scraping across the floor, no dog throwing himself at the sliding glass door to get out. When I opened his pen, he stretched and yawn and unfolded himself out the door to the backyard where he promptly found the raspberry bushes and peed...like a fire hose.

He was happy to see me. Ben's happy is displayed by his body sidling up against your legs and a continuous circular movement so that his side stays planted on your thighs. Remember, he's huge so I've learned long ago to brace myself for his merry greeting lest I land on my backside a victim of his oafishness.

Ann came home (with a mutal friend) a few hours later and we settled into the night with me sleeping in the downstairs bedroom so I could keep an eye on Ben tucked away in his "safe" spot in the living room. He would have slept the whole night through if Rubin hadn't needed to go out. With earplugs in, I didn't hear him, but Ben informed me of the activity with a swift nuzzle of his nose on my left elbow and he, too, went out and relieved himself again.

In the morning, though I did not sleep as soundly as I would have liked, everyone else did and once again Ben woke me with a push to my thigh and a happy yawn as he spun in a dance at the foot of the bed. We knew he'd relaxed after he peed and pooped in the yard, though he still rejected any food and hung anxiously around the front door until we strapped on his leash and headed down the road to his own house.

He was happy to be home, but never a very affectionate guy, Ben showed his pleasure by finding a tennis ball in the yard and handing it to Steven who obediently threw it across the yard again and again. We all watched from the deck, the sky peppered with white clouds and the air fresh, washed clean by late-night rains.

"When we move from this house," Steven told me, "I imagine the next owners and the owners after that will find tennis balls for years and years to come."

This morning, as we walked Ben and Rubin back to the wedding house I realized that my apprehensions (no matter the occasion) are never as horrific as I imagine them to be. It's probably a lesson I should have learned years ago and though it often repeats its refrain, this particular lesson seems to have difficulty sticking. Ben was fine. I was fine. My clothes were fine. The wedding was more than fine.

I know this. I know all of this, but still, like the tennis balls in Ben's backyard, my worries are buried deep. It will take me years and years to uncover them all.