Y’all, the wedding was so lovely. Her attendants were her sister and her daughter and the black dog’s man was the Butcher’s best man and her son walked her down the aisle. My dad did the service and I think he got choked up a little. She wore a brown spaghetti-strapped floor length dress with a white crochet overlay. The Butcher went all out with formal Converse, a nice suit, and tie and pocket square he picked out for all the dudes to coordinate. It was the perfect balance of formal and informal.
They served Moe’s for their meal afterwards and I have to say, holy shit. The dude came in, set up in no time, and if that’s what Moe’s thinks will feed 75 people, they must mean 75 linebackers because I know people went back multiple times and I would still say that half the food was left. So that was awesome. I mean, I prefer events were the food seems bountiful and people are comfortable eating as much as they want. So, it was Heaven for me.
I made the famous Phillips church event punch–1/2 Hawaiian punch, 1/4 7up, 1/4 Vernor’s ginger ale, generous splash of pineapple juice, and rainbow sherbet to top.
For an event pulled together in three weeks, it was amazing. Hell, I’ve been to more chaotic weddings with thirty months of planning.
And they were so happy. I had a dream last night that the Butcher was missing and I was grabbing and shaking the kid who lived behind us (when we were all children) demanding to know where he’d gone. Which, even as I was dreaming it, seemed too spot on. But I don’t think it was about the Butcher not living here anymore, especially since all his stuff is still here! How gone can he be?
I think it had more to do with how, usually, when I look at the Butcher, I see all of our shared history layered there, from the baby who stood on my feet and held my hands to walk to the kid we stuffed in the toybox, to the boy I taught to drive, to the young, young man who moved to Nashville and helped me have this life. But seeing him holding hands with his wife, so at ease with her and happy, I saw him only as a man with his own life.
And it made me really happy and proud but also a little sad. Or maybe not sad, but wistful. Like, we did good for each other and now that part is over, but this other exciting part is starting.
I’m just also mostly worried that the dog is going to be bored and lonely without the Butcher. I know I’m just not that exciting.
But! And here’s another exciting thing! The dog played with my step-niece yesterday. Like, played like a dog would play. She repeatedly threw a Nerf thingy up in the air and he followed it with his eyes and seemed to be enjoying watching it and when it got close enough to him, he would try to grab it out of the air and, sometimes, he succeeded and, when he did, he let her take it back and throw it some more. A game! He played a game and he seemed to enjoy it.
There was the usual weirdness. My uncle told me about how his father-in-law lectured him about how to have sex with my aunt their first time and my uncle’s efforts to follow through on that advice, which will cause me to need therapy for the next nine thousand years.
I didn’t get nearly enough time to talk with all the family I wanted to get to talk to. People grouched about being “bored” at times over the weekend and other people were way too hung up on matching everyone at the wedding up with each other, regardless of age.
But, on the other hand, yesterday at breakfast, we sat around the community table at Ruby’s Kitchen (shout out to the guy who moved so that we could have it) and there were so many of us and so many of us were children and my dad at one point was trying to hand the biscuits down the table and he said, “Mrs. Phillips, take these!” and three women looked up and he was startled and laughed.
And I had a feeling like, okay, good. I’m glad he’s seen this.
But now I have to clean the litter boxes myself and that bums me out.
Tiny Cat Pants 