I find that some things are best expressed in 17 syllables.
It’s been a couple of weeks since the last haiku, but I’m getting back on it. Feel free to send your own in – we’ll have a haiku party.
Here is mine for the week:
Italian dishes,
mating like rabbits in sink.
How I tire of you.
Categories: The Haiku
Tagged: dishes, dishpan hands, haiku, rabbits, series, weeklies
Month Four of the engagement:
We had really started butting heads on wedding details, so I distanced myself from my mother-in-law. I needed space to do my calm breathing exercises. I had grown tired of her endless “assistance”, constant reminders that I needed her along when I did hair and makeup trials or gown fittings. I couldn’t possibly make the right choices on my own.
One day, she finally invited me to lunch and I was out of excuses. After the initial gossip and pleasantries, her face turned serious. “I’ve wanted to talk to you about something,” she said. “I feel as if I don’t see you enough. You don’t call me enough, and it also makes me upset when you don’t respond to all of my emails.”
I immediately know she’s been to see a therapist. Her ability to form reasonable statements on her own is never this good. Astounded, I explained that a) I worked full time and b) I was sorry that I did not acknowledge every crappy joke, cute puppy picture or alarmist health warning she emailed throughout the week. Yes, I would try harder, and how wonderful that she’s found a therapist she liked.
Unfortunately, her travails into self-awareness were short-lived. Two weeks later, she said that she’d just had her last session with the therapist. When asked why she stopped, she replied with a satisfied shrug, ”I have nothing more to talk about!” She meant it. She was fixed! And she smiled into her soup.
I felt a kick underneath the table. It was my husband’s foot. It was saying, “are you getting this?” This is precisely the reason that we sit next to, rather than across from, each other at dinner: so that our feet can talk in code when our mouths are bound by manners. We spent the whole drive home parroting his mother, alternately laughing and being terrified that she actually believed herself.
Knowing that she was no longer retaining anyone who would tell her the truth was depressing, to say the least. There are few things worse than a narcissistic personality who has ditched her therapist. Two things that come to mind are the atomic bomb and abusing small animals, but that’s all I can come up with.
Coming up…
You’re going to get somebody else to do your makeup, right?
and
You know you can still back out.
Categories: The Wedding
Tagged: dinner, engaged, engagement, fortress, insanity, makeup, mother in law, planning, therapist, wedding
Fiery bouquets. Peaches, mangos, creams and reds. Two o’clock ceremony in the garden. Handmade placecards. Jazz band. Cellist.
And then I woke up.
I think the biggest mistake made with my wedding was accepting the offer to hold it my in-laws’ estate. I thought naively, who wouldn’t want to get married on the sprawling, manicured acreage with a Tuscan mansion in the background and black swans in the lake? Anyone in their right mind, that’s who. Oh Elvis, I apologize for my stupidity; I truly do.
Deciding on a home wedding put the ball in my mother-in-law’s court – her tennis court, to be exact, where the reception would be held. As we hiked down the lawn toward the court in the initial stages of planning, I described to her my color-scheme, flowers, and how I’d seen the perfect bridesmaid dresses to fit right in. She said nothing, until we arrived at the tennis court. With a sweep of her arm, she said, “But look at the morninglory. It’s everywhere, and it’s blue.”
Okay. So?
“Well the colors that you want are not going to match the morninglory. But it’s your wedding, you can have your colors clash if you like…” This is the way she usually framed her distaste, beneath thinly veiled insults that implied that I knew nothing. A small sampling of my favorites were Well, it’s not what I would choose… and Trust me, I know what works… and Really? You would do that? Oh.
She went on to remind me that alllllllll the brides this season were doing baby blue, which coincidentally would go PERFECTLY with her morninglory, and didn’t I think that would be FABULOUS? Now, I like blue – in things like sky and water. But in a wedding? So drab and tame and… oh, yes, wealthy Jew. Should be perfect! I retreated back to square one, solemnly removing every Post-It from my wishes and turning my magazines back to the table of contents.
Little by little, all of my wishes for my wedding were subverted. The 2 o’clock garden ceremony became 5 o’clock, the cellist became a harpist, the roses became blue hydrangeas. The jazz quartet became an obnoxious cover band the in-laws enjoyed, and the bride became increasingly and at regular intervals, aware that she was not the reason for the festivities, but rather a convenient excuse.
Categories: The Wedding
Tagged: band, ceremony, colors, elvis, flowers, garden, magazines, mother in law, post-its, reception, roses, wedding, wedding planning
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