September 14, 2005 - 3:48 PM

Heart Break in San Francisco

Over Labor Day weekend, I drove up past San Francisco to Sonoma County for the wedding of my godbrother Eddie. Godbrother? I think I've explained it before here (and lord knows, I explained it at least a dozen times that weekend), but his parents are my godparents, and my parents are his godparents. So, godbrothers.

My heart done did got broke a couple times that weekend which, combined with the Victoria thing the weekend before, has left me in a bit of a strange place since then. I'll be ok, and then I'll be sad, and then I'll be ok again. Tony and Margaret's wedding this coming weekend won't help with that I'm sure.

The 400 mile drive up I-5 was long and decidedly unscenic. Occasionally, I cruised past fallow fields where mini-dust tornados were swirling in tight circles. One field had at least 7 small whirlwinds going at the same time, all warily patrolling their little patch of dirt as if they were guarding against any intruders. There was a stretch of a mile that was just cows and dirt (and stink). And entering the San Francisco area, there were farms of hillside wind-powered generators. But otherwise, the highway was uninterrupted boringness.

Napa was pretty. Quaint, country-ish, reminded me a bit of the backroad farms around Harford County where I grew up, but with the upper-class faux-hippiness of Amherst and Northampton where I went to college. There was a reception Friday night with drinks and hors d'oeuvres that I was aiming to make, and with my zooming up the highways, I arrived an hour early. My timing was perfect, because Eddie's family had just showed up at the hotel/restaurant to have dinner.

His parents moved to South Dakota six or so years ago from Maryland for his dad's practice, and I've only been able to see them 3 times since then, most recently at Phil's and Soph's weddings. Ed's older brother, Mike, is my sister's age, and he's been in Madagascar for the past five years, first with the Peace Corps, then with USAid. He married a Madagascar woman named Pauline and had a son who is now 21 months old. This was their first trip to the States. Ed's younger brother, Frank, is now a Junior at Amherst.

Heartbreak number one was seeing Mike and his son Jason. Mike is the same loud, brash wiseass that he was when we were growing up, but he's also become a softie as a husband and a father. Nothing has changed, everything has changed. Jason is sooo cute, and watching Mike dote on him was just as adorable. He speaks in English to Jason while Pauline talks to Jason in Malagasi, and several friends in Madagascar speak French to him, so he'll probably be a trilingual baby.

During dinner, it was discovered that I had nowhere to stay that night. I had left the planning of accomodations to my mom since I knew that she was coming up with my dad from Phoenix for the wedding. But I had thought that they were arriving Friday night, when in reality, they were flying in Saturday afternoon. Eddie's parents worked it out that I would stay at the inn where Eddie and several of his friends were staying, and they footed the bill.

The reception was small and a little awkward for me since I didn't know anyone there other than Eddie's family. I did chat with a few of his friends, the bride (Meg, class of '99 at Williams) and the bride's family, but most of my time was spent catching up with Frank. I asked him how things were at Amherst (like me, he chose it because he liked Williams College, where Eddie and my sister Soph both went, but was advised that a school that's less isolated would be better, and since Amherst is basically Williams' twin sibling, that's where he went), what he'd been up to, how his family was. He spent two months this summer in Madagascar with Mike, which was the first time that he got to meet Pauline and Jason. Anytime Mike or Pauline couldn't be found, Jason immediately went to Frank. Heh.

Heartbreak number two was watching Eddie's mom teach Jason an old Korean handclap game (sort've like Pattycake). I was barely able to hear the sing-song she was teaching him over the din of conversations, but I slowly recognized the hand motions, and then she did this thing where you circle your fists around each other while saying "guri guri guri guri", and it all came back to me. I remembered my mom and her playing that game with me when I was little. My heart both leaped and sank to remember.

The next day I had lunch with Eddie's family before we got ready for the wedding. My parents arrived as things were being setup, and my mom and Eddie's mom reverted to being school girls, whispering and giggling and doing everything together. The ceremony was held under a tent outside with the sun shining and a breeze blowing. It was lovely, and, even better, it was short. The wedding reception was at a hall next to the tent, so people just mingled while pictures were taken. I drank a lot of scotch.

After everyone had been seated for dinner, Eddie and Meg forewent the usual Western tradition of an announcement of the wedding party (since there was none) and a first dance. Instead, they both got dressed in traditional Korean clothes and performed a ceremony called Peh-Bek in which they bow to the parents of both bride and groom, serve them drinks, and then have the parents toss offerings for the bride to catch in her dress to indicate how many children they will have. That was a nice touch.

Dinner was buffet style and quite tasty, I think, but I can't remember because I was buzzing pretty hard by then. But I do remember hearbreak number three coming while Meg's twin sister gave her speech/toast. She told all these wonderful stories about Meg and, of course, started to cry towards the end. And I started to cry. Yes the alcohol helped me along in that department, as did seeing Meg's sister break down. But I was more affected by the realizations that I didn't know anything about Meg until that weekend, and that I knew very little about Eddie's life in the past 10 years. I'd known Ed since I was a baby (he's a year older than me); our families got together at least once a month as we grew up; we went to the same junior high and high schools. But I lost track of what he was up to once I left Amherst, only sporadically picking up tidbits from my mom after she had gossipped with his mom on the phone.

He had gone on to live a life that I knew nothing about- if I'd stayed at Amherst, who knows, I might've seen more of him before we both graduated. I might've kept in contact with him. But that didn't happen, and here I was slipping in for a few days to catch a glimpse of a life that should have been familiar to me, but was foreign.

And that snowballed into heartbreak number four, the realization of how much I'd missed of Mike's and Frank's lives too. As I looked at the three of them over the course of the night, it struck me how much they mirrored me and Phil and Soph. Soph and Mike have both taken up the social awareness mantle, seeking to make the world a little better which I guess plays from their roles as eldest brother/sister; Phil and Eddie are both extroverted, gregarious young men who know how to keep a party lively (and they're both kinda metrosexual); and me and Frank are both full of adoration of our older siblings and, as a result of being the youngest, a bit introverted and unsure of ourselves.

The next morning, I surprisingly woke up at 9 AM with cottonmouth and an unsettled stomach. Surprisingly being the time I woke up, not the condition in which I awoke. Somehow I had made it back to my parents hotel room around 2:30 and found my way into bed. After a really long soak in the shower, I trundled down to the front office to get some coffee and pastries. My parents were outside, sitting on the curb, reading the local newspapers. As we ate our breakfast, my parents began to grill me as loving parents do, which led to heartbreak number five.

I don't hold it against them anymore, but it still does make me squirmy whenever my parents bring up my future. You can't help but be squirmy when your parents have a "serious talk" with you about anything. You know that they only worry about you, that you're still their little baby and they want you to have a safe, happy, difficulty free life. But it's impossible for them to bring up the subject without making it feel like they're attacking you with a sledgehammer. Plus, with my parents, there really is no "tact" button.

They talked about how my job was going, and they went into how maybe I should consider grad school. Grad school for what, I asked. And it felt like I was in high school all over again, as they brought up what one of my teachers in grade school had said about me being a good debater and that I could be a lawyer; or maybe take my audio engineering background into actual engineering; or, even better, medical school! Never mind the fact that I'm as dumb as a high schooler at this point and the process of learning would be a struggle for me. They even suggested that I study up for the MCATs and aim to enter med school in 2007, when Phoenix will be opening a brand new med school (a proposal that apparently is buzzing in Arizona). The chance to go to med school half an hour from where my parents are living. Can you not feel the excitement in the air?

As they kept pushing these ideas on me, and I reluctantly heard them out, they revealed that they felt I was still young enough to pursue these real careers (while doing the music thing on the side as a hobby). Soph was married and, they intimated, a lost cause to do something monetarily stable for a career while Phil, while in a more substantially graspable line of work (financial advising), was still trying to establish himself. Unattached, unencumbered little ol' me, I could still make something of myself.

Their last words to me as I drove away were "just think about it". Depressed by their pep-talk, I called Soph a little while later, and she revealed that they'd had the same talk with her earlier. We both sighed a little, from relief and from exasperation.

The final heartbreak came the next day when my mom called while she and my dad were sight-seeing in S.F. She handed the phone off to my dad, who apologized for the talk. I assured him that no apology was necessary, that I understood that he and my mom were just looking out for me, that they did it out of love and worry. But I couldn't help feeling another piece of my heart break off. listening to him humble himself and ask for my forgiveness. When did my parents become so fragile?

Now Listening To : Cardigans- Still Life
Random Thought : I'm making you depressed with these entries, aren't I? I'm sorry.

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