Touched by Irreverence

I had a powerful moment the other day in our local supermarket. As I stumbled along one of the aisles in a post-Leo-up all night- stupor, I found myself looking into a face I recognized, but was momentarily nameless. She paused and said, "you know I have been thinking about you." I embarrassingly raised the point that I didn't remember how we knew each other. Gulp, interpersonal interaction faux pas numero uno. "Samba Ja," she said. Ah yes, she was the contact for the band that played our wedding. "I have to tell you," she continued, "I grabbed a couple of the bookmarks that you gave out as gifts. Out of all of those literate and lovely notes to mark the day, the one that I absolutely adore is irreverent and simply makes me giggle." 

Which one, I asked? "I don't give a rat's ass,"was her reply. Well that is a coincidence I said, that happened to be my late father's quote. I went on to mention that I had listened to my audio recordings of that memorable wedding day, for the first time, just the night before. In fact I had started to write about the wonderful coincidence that had occurred as I recorded my brother-in-law Abe and I dressing for the ceremony. Of course, I gave her the supermarket run-in abbreviated version. But for the rest of you, here it is as it happened on our wedding day. 

For our wedding this past summer Heather and I decided to give out bookmarks as a gift for all of our guests. Each bookmark depicted one of 30 different quotes, the date of our wedding, and Shawna Trumbly's "Crow Frog Kiss" drawing. Thankfully my cousin Becka saved the day by taking over the final design and assembling all 300 of the individual bookmarks. It was a great deal of work and she didn't finish until hours before the wedding ceremony. Heather and I had a lot of fun coming up with those quotes. A number of them came from our favorite books or were generated from conversations with family and friends. 

As it should be, the day of our wedding my lovely bride and her lady friends dressed upstairs at my aunt and uncles in their beautiful bedroom overlooking the river. I was sequestered to the back guest room. Abe and I were dressing and doing our man-thing, mostly passing a bottle of burbon and guiding Heather's 80 year old aunt's to the wedding site over the phone. It was really wonderful, that moment, reflecting on my life and the magnitude of what we were about to do. Abe was in fine form, encouraging me to wear my father's woven sun hat that I have become so fond of over the years. He had pulled out his grandfather's 1923 bowler, a real beaut in contrast to my scraggly worn out hat. It was about that moment that Becka arrived and came in to share the finished bookmarks. I reached in and grabbed one randomly, handed it to Abe, explaining that Heather and I intended to give them out as gifts and this should be his. As coincidence would have it out of all 300 of the bookmarks, "I don't give a rat's ass", was the quote I pulled out. We all were struck by what powerful connection this was to that moment. I then pulled out another, "No broke yokes, no false hopes", which was attributed to Abe's dad. Neither of those men were there, but they were there in spirit and we felt it.