Mom asked me this morning why I was tired – I told her it was from two days of non-stop talking and chattering. Phew. I’m looking forward to a couple of hours on the plane of complete and utter silence. I love my family, but MAN! They can talk.
We did a lot of driving on memory lane. A lot of it didn’t pertain to me as Risa and Dave lived in metro Detroit a lot longer than I did. When I lived there, I wasn’t even in kindergarten, so I don’t have many memories of it. We saw the house in Bloomfield Hills, the house Dave and Risa lived in after mom was dumped by her first husband, and the house we spent so much time in on Cooke Street in Dearborn – my grandparent’s house. We drove endlessly around Birmingham. It’s really changed since I was last here. Lots of ugly houses torn down and cute cottages and craftsman-style homes going up in their places. We even drove by my nightmare on W. Lincoln Street.
I barely recognized the corner of Southfield and Lincoln because it has changed so much – new houses, expensive houses, lots of TruGreen lawns. I felt like I was going to barf going down the street, but it was so different that I was able to calm down. Turns out the house on W. Lincoln doesn’t exist anymore, and there is a gorgeous new house where the main house and guest house once stood. It was very cathartic. When things go wrong, sometimes I wish to burn them all down so I don’t have to look at them anymore. Knowing that the house was gone made it seem like all the bad memories were gone with it.
We ate at Olga’s (and it was as good as I remembered it), shopped at the Varsity Store (go blue) and looked at all the new and hoity-toity shops that have populated and expanded the original Birmingham area. Unfortunately we didn’t have time to explore Royal Oak, as I have a few good memories there as well, but we were squeezing in drops of memory for every mile of Woodward we traveled.
We ate at a place called Recipes for brunch yesterday morning. Below are a few pictures of my insane brother and sister. We decided to count Coney Islands – by the time I got the airport this morning, we were around 65 of them. Coney Islands are as frequent in the Detroit area as cell phone stores in Richmond. It’s crazy. A lot of coney dogs are consumed here every day. Dave’s planning on eating another four before the baseball game tomorrow, chased with a couple of beers. As long as my family stays upwind of him, everyone should survive.
Note the color of the sky in this one. I love Michigan!
The wedding was very pretty. The priest couldn’t resist getting a dig in for all of us secular folk, by announcing in the first few minutes that those who were married in secular places just didn’t have the same strength to their vows that those married in the Catholic church do. Sigh. I turned around and made burning in hell hand gestures to Anja as she had recently been married on a beach – and probably not wearing shoes!!! The agonizing horror of not being married in a church . . . I’m not sure how I live with myself or how Mike and I have managed to stay married for as long as we have without the strength of those church-imposed vows.
It was quite humorous because I was just feeling slightly warm toward my old religion, remembering when to cross myself, when to make that weird sign of the cross on my lips, when to say “amen” and when to kneel. Doing things habitually and ritualistically is somewhat comforting, but when the priest made that statement, I immediately snapped out of my Catholic haze and started to feel crabby. Was that really necessary to make the rest of us who dare to not be Catholic or not be married in their church feel like our vows are meaningless, that “Jesus isn’t in our marriage”? Typically Catholic to take cheap shots at the “others” while supposedly celebrating a happy event. Whatever. The rest of the mass was nice. Risa affectionately dubbed the ceremony “The Marriage of Julie and David – the Musical” because the priest sang EVERYTHING. He had a really great voice – if he ever leaves the priesthood, he’s got a future in recording. I’ve never been to a sung mass before so that was interesting, until I misheard the vocalist and thought he bellowed “Tuna, Be Afraid”. Turns out he was actually saying “Do Not Be Afraid,” but by then, it was too late, and I was simultaneously trying not to wet my pants and hold back my laughter. Dave pulled a Mom move from the past and grabbed the fleshy backside of my arm, twisting it and glaring, then giggling himself. I love church!
The photographer needed some serious valium – she was literally herding and shouting at us immediately after the ceremony to get us lined up for photos. St. Hugo’s apparently packs many weddings per day into the stone chapel, and the mass ran long (probably due to the singing), so we were pressed for time. Poor Julie and Dave, stuck in the midst of a bunch of sweating relatives. The photographer even yelled at my sister to get moving – suggesting that Risa should stampede over the elderly lady moving at a snail’s pace in front of her. For a moment I felt like I was in a mosh pit instead of a wedding. Then, we made too much noise, and a very bitter church employee yelled, “KEEP IT DOWN!! THIS IS A CHURCH!” Risa, in her sarcastic manner, muttered back, “Yes, god forbid we raise our voices to the Lord in joyous exaltation of the fact that we are HAPPY someone got MARRIED!”
The wedding became a lot more fun once we left the church. We ran a few errands, grabbed a snack, and socialized in the smoking lounge at the hotel (thankfully, no one was smoking). Michigan, raising a middle finger at those of us from friendlier climates, decided to remind us of our past by sending icy rain and lots of wind on our summer dresses, ridiculous shoes and dainty wraps. We all huddled together and cursed Michigan and the freaking insane weather that it has.
Julie and David’s cocktail hour was outside at the Pine Lake Country Club. It was beautiful, despite the potential for snow. We all just drank a lot, huddled together, and attacked the passed appetizers. Julie did look particularly stunning. I rarely see Cristin or Julie with makeup on, and they both looked beautiful. I was glad to have been there. I did instruct my family to stop telling Cristin she looks like me all of the time. Frankly, being her age and told that she “looks like a middle-aged, overweight mother of two children” could possibly not be the biggest compliment she’s ever received. It gets old hearing that over and over again, for both of us. Yes, we look alike. Move on, please.
This morning, Risa and I rode the elevator down to meet for brunch. It was quite an event, as Uncle Richard was paying. We all took full advantage of that. Steve even drove back from the east side of Detroit just for a free hotel brunch. As we were getting in the elevator, a family of three got on with us. Risa was clutching her posterior and complaining about how bad her butt hurt from Harley kicking her. She said, “He acts like a 3 year old child, and he gets all fired up. He bites and kicks sometimes.”
“Why does he bite?” I asked.
“Sometimes if I’m giving him something to eat, he starts licking my hands. He’s really into licking. If he gets excited, sometimes he bites, so I have to give him a hard swat to let him know I don’t like that.”
I asked her if I could ride him, because he’s so huge, and the lady in the elevator gave a huge sigh of relief and said, “THANK GOD you’re talking about a horse – I thought you were talking about your kids, you horrible mothers!” It was quite humorous. Yeah, those pesky kids, always licking and biting and kicking. We just give him a hard swat, put a halter on them, and tie them outside in the rain.
Mike seemed to do just fine without me. I missed him and the kids but as Dave said, we would never had been able to do what we did with our spouses and kids in tow. We should really get together, just the siblings, a couple of times a decade. I know Dave is hurt that no one comes to visit him (though Risa is next year), but I have to take it baby steps with Mike. Getting him to Hawaii is quite an endeavor. I’m not sure they make a drug strong enough to get him on an all-day flight over the ocean, especially when he finds out how much it normally costs to fly there. I’m working on it, however. In the meantime, hooking up with Dave and Risa when he’s in the continental US will have to do.
I have a great family, extended and close – the cousins in general are all laid back and fun to be around. Although you don’t get much quality time with anyone during a wedding, it’s still nice to go and dance and be silly and enjoy. There aren’t many of us left to take the plunge, so there won’t be many more family weddings until the cousins raise their babies (like mine) and get them married off. It’s weird to think that the next generations of weddings (and funerals, too – with our parents) are ours to have. It’s weird to be seated at a table full of 21 year old kids and realize that they think I am old at 35.
