Friday: Travel West
The night before we left for my sister’s wedding in Davis, California, I had a stress dream. In it, North and I were together, trying to get to a medical office only a few blocks away where we were supposed to meet Beth. But for various reasons, we could not get there. We were trapped for a long time in a big warehouse with a roller coaster inside (and compelled to ride the coaster) and there were all these mythical creatures wandering around. Somehow in the course of our wandering, I lost my shoes, laptop, and phone.
Now as all these items are things you need to put in the bin to go through security, and we failed to make our appointment, the dream seemed to be about travel worries. But I commented to Beth that morning that it was strange, because these aren’t my specific travel anxieties. Instead, I fret ahead of time about my physical and mental discomfort from not being able to move for long periods of time (I get antsy and sometimes get leg cramps) and the inevitable disruption to my sleep if I’m traveling across time zones. I don’t do well with sleep deprivation.
Well, the things I find unpleasant about flying did happen. On the longer flight I had to pee and couldn’t get out of my seat because the seatbelt light was on for a long time, and I am a rule-follower. I also got a little airsick. And of course, later, I was jet-lagged. But I am not going to say any more about any of that right now, because North had a much worse time. It turns out my dream—largely about obstacles to arrival—was closer to the mark than I thought.
North flew from Cleveland to Phoenix and found out their flight from Phoenix to Sacramento had been canceled due to heavy rain in Phoenix. The only flight they could get to Sacramento would have them arriving the following day too late to make the wedding and to make matters worse the airline wasn’t even putting stranded travelers up in hotels. (Did you know the Trump administration gave airlines more leeway about this?)
And another complicating factor: North is too young to rent a hotel room. My sister called up Dave’s sister who lives in Phoenix, asking if North could spend the night at her house, but the sister said no. Beth talked North through the process of getting a flight back to Cleveland the next day and found an Airbnb for them and then another one after the first one didn’t want to let North use Beth’s membership. And because the airport was full of people who needed to leave and find accommodations, it took forever to get a Lyft. It was quite the ordeal.
In between all the calls and texts, we reunited with my mom, Sara, Dave, Lily-Mei, their cat Shadow and bearded lizard Sparky; we also met my mother’s gentleman friend Paul, Sara’s friend Kimberly who was staying with my mom, and Sara’s family’s new (to us) cat Glimmer. Dave and Lily-Mei left soon after we arrived to attend a minor league baseball game with some of the wedding guests and the rest of us (except the cats and the lizard) had pizza.
Saturday: More Travel, Brunch, and Wedding
North got up before dawn the next day and went back to the airport in hopes of getting on a flight to Sacramento standby. The agents they consulted could not find one, but North found one by themselves and managed to get on it. We’d all given up hope of them making it to the wedding, so everyone was excited they were coming after all.
The wedding was a three-day affair with events before and afterward. Sadly, we had arrived too late go to the swimming hole Friday morning and afternoon and the Friday evening ball game would have kept us up unbearably late, as we are early birds on East Coast time to boot.
However, we were there (minus North) for the pre-wedding brunch at this venue. It’s a farm/brewery with a nut orchard and hops fields and a lot of poultry (chickens, ducks, geese, turkeys) wandering around. There are couches and tables inside and just outside a big, open-sided barn full of antique farm equipment. You can reserve tables for events and during the afternoon and evening there are food trucks and sometimes live music. It was morning, so we brought all our own food—three kinds of quiche, pastries, and two big bowls of fruit salad my mom made.
At the brunch and later at the wedding I reunited with and met people from many eras of Sara’s life (high school, college, Santa Cruz, Oakland, and Ashland), plus some of Dave’s friends, and Lily-Mei’s two besties Athena and Emma. Among the notable guests (for me) was Sean, who went to our high school and overlapped with both Sara and me. He and I were in a student group (Student Coalition for Peace) together. It was great to see him. I was also surprised at how happy it made me to see Dune, my favorite of Sara’s ex-boyfriends, with whom she moved from Santa Cruz to Ashland. I hadn’t thought of him in a long time, but I was always fond of him.
At the brunch, when I approached Sara’s best friend whom I hadn’t seen in decades, I said, “Abigail?”
She answered, “Steph. I haven’t seen you since that other wedding. The one that didn’t take.” Here is a good time to explain Sara has had three weddings. One in her late twenties, the one to which Abigail was referring. Then in her late forties, during the first summer of covid, she legally married Dave in an outdoor ceremony with a handful of local friends who would not need to travel during those perilous times. This third wedding was the party with a wider circle of family and friends Sara wanted and couldn’t have five years ago.
Later I told Sara about this exchange, and she cracked up, saying, “That sounds like Abigail.”
Throughout the morning, North kept us updated on their travels by text. When they got to the Long Beach airport, this is what they had to say: “I love this airport. It’s so calm and quiet and not full of people sitting on the floor crying.”
After brunch, we picked North up at the Sacramento airport, which was also not full of people crying. North hadn’t eaten lunch, and we thought we’d need to eat again before the wedding, so we stopped at a shopping center where the kids got pizza and Beth and I got tacos. Back at Sara’s house, North hung out in Sara’s pool. Because there’s a fence around the pool and it’s private, North left their waist-length curly blond hair uncovered and it floated behind them. They looked like a mermaid. Beth said she was tempted by the pool, too, but we had about an hour before we needed to get dressed for the wedding and as we were both jet-lagged and exhausted, a nap seemed more practical.
The wedding was at this vineyard. People mingled outside. I talked to a few people, but not as many as at the brunch, as I was a little worn out. I wandered around and took in the Spanish colonial architecture and the fountain in the courtyard, illuminated by the late afternoon sun.
When it was time for the ceremony, people took their seats in front of a bower with pink crepe at the top and pink roses appearing to grow on the sides. (Sara later told me it was a real rose bush but no roses were in bloom, so Abigail had stuck cut roses into the bower. It was very convincing, I think because the spacing wasn’t too regular.)
Abigail’s wife Val officiated, giving a speech about how Sara and Dave are very different but work together anyway. Dave is a retired actuary who likes spreadsheets and suburban developments, golfs, and wears polo shirts. Sara, while a responsible business owner, also has a hippie streak and likes old houses and collecting what he calls “rusty metal shit.” (He wrote this on a box when they were moving from Ashland to Davis.)
Both Sara and Dave spoke. In her speech she read a list she’d made while single of forty-two characteristics she hoped for in a partner, then noted how Dave checked off almost every box. Lily-Mei was the ring bearer, bringing them the same rings they’ve been wearing for five years. The couple took their vows and kissed. As they walked away from the bower between the rows of folding chairs, guests showered them with rose petals from bowls in the aisle.
There were toasts at dinner. Sean made a similar point to Val’s about the couple’s differences, starting by noting that Dave goes by Dave. He said in his circles a man named David would go by David, and that one in Sara’s might go by Ocean or Redwood, but Dave is Dave. Sara said she couldn’t thank everyone who helped with the preparations, but she called out Abigail for her special efforts and North for their fortitude in travel.
After dinner, there was karaoke. Sara and Dave had the first number, “Summer Nights,” from Grease. When it got to the line “Did she put up a fight?” Dave sang, “Did you respect her boundaries?” which got a laugh. My mom sang “When I Fall in Love.” We stayed for about half the karaoke and when we left Sara thanked us for staying up so late, which was kind of funny because it was only nine o’clock, but you know—jet-lagged early birds.
Sunday: Last Day in Davis
The only wedding weekend activity left was a winery tour Sunday afternoon, but we’d opted out of that. There was talk of having breakfast out with Sara’s family and some of her friends, but she texted me that morning to say that they’d been up late at the wedding after-party and couldn’t make it before we needed to take North back to the airport. So, my family of four went to a bakery/café where I had ratatouille with a fried egg, a charming apricot Danish with apricot halves rather than preserves in it, and a latte.
We drove North—who had spent longer getting to Davis than they’d spent there—to the airport, said our goodbyes. On the way back, we went to the Davis food co-op to pick up provisions for breakfast the next morning and our own travels the next day. Then we swung by Sara’s house, picked up Noah and walked to my mom’s house for lunch. She and Sara live within a fifteen-minute walk of each other, which must be nice. Paul was there, too, and the five of us ate brunch leftovers in Mom’s backyard. Beth had never been to Mom’s house, where she’s lived for a couple years, so she got the grand tour of the house and the garden, which has more kinds of fruit trees than I can remember. Right now, though, all she has is grapes and some green oranges. We stayed over there a couple hours and got to know Paul a little better.
Then we went back to Sara’s house because I needed some down time before Sara and Dave got back from the winery. Noah, Beth, and I read, I soaked in the hot tub, and Beth dozed in one of the poolside lounge chairs. I also read your blogs and made a stab at starting this blog post. Mom and Paul came over for dinner, and the eight of us had Chinese takeout and leftover cupcakes from the wedding.
Monday: Travel East
At first, I thought we wouldn’t see Sara’s family in the morning because we were leaving early, but I forgot it was a school day and there is a seventh grader living in the house, so we got to say our goodbyes to Sara, Dave, Lily-Mei and the cats in the morning after all. We flew home. It was uneventful, with only the usual discomforts, none of which mattered, as we all got where we were going, approximately on time.
When we walked out to the parking lot at National Monday night, I noticed that the air, which I would not have called humid under normal circumstances, did feel damper than the dry air of central California. Throughout the next several days, I often found myself thinking of the orchards; the cacti; the palm trees; the distant, arid mountains; and the rusty old shit in my sister’s yard.