This past weekend, my nephew, Jeff, tied the nuptial knot with the beauteous Sharida. If my aging memory is correct, the first time I met Sharida was exactly four years ago this week, when she and Jeff visited Mom in her hospital room at Utah Valley Hospital—where Mom was recovering from emergency hip replacement surgery. I was not at all surprised to see Jeff walk into Mom’s hospital room. He is Mom’s first grandchild, and he adamantly maintains he is her favorite grandchild. (Of course, each of Mom’s grandkids claims to be her favorite.) But the fact that Jeff brought Sharida to join us in the chaos of Mom’s High-flying, Broken Hip Trick Adventure spoke volumes to me about how Jeff and Sharida thought about each other. Sharida’s concern for Mom was all it took for her to win me over.
Anyhoo… Suzanne and I drove to Ogden for the wedding celebration, which was held on the rooftop at Ogden River Brewing—a place which did not yet exist when we lived in Ogden. It was a fine-and-funky venue for the event. I can verify that the Diet Coke was good. Suzanne can verify that the wine was of yummy vintage. Oh, and Suzanne liked the peach cobbler, too. My one sadness of the day is that I missed running into the Father of the Groom, my longtime bro-in-law, Kent. Fortunately, my sister, Mercedes/BT, sent me a photo of Kent being his cute self in his neckwear. I have included the snapshot here. Kent’s wearing a paisley tie, in honor of me and my love for paisles. I regret that Kent and I missed out on gawking, in person, at each other’s neckwear choices.
For my own Tie o’ the Day, I chose to don my “usual” wedding tie. It’s kissy and romantic. I haven’t worn it to every wedding get-together I’ve attended since I bought it in the late 80’s, but I’ve probably worn it to more than half of them.
It is sometimes tricky for me to dress for events like wedding celebrations. It’s not that I don’t have anything appropriate to wear. It’s that I”m…well,…me. I have too much to wear, and—if left to think of only of myself—it would be kinda easy for me to devise a way to wear all of it at once! But somebody else’s wedding reception is not my show. I don’t want to stand out from anybody’s event’s purpose in any way whatsoever. On the other hand, after all these years of expressing my fashion ingenious-ness, I do have a style reputation to uphold. People expect a little flash-and-chuckle from me, in terms of my attire—whether I’m at a funeral, or at church, or at an Elton John concert. If I’m not wearing some piece of clothing or an accessory that is—for lack of a better word—LOUD, people tend to worry that I’m not feeling well. I have to carefully calculate to find the style balance between being who I am and being part of a family/community gathering.
My style mission is further complicated by my Bigfoot-like/Loch Ness Monster-like way of attending bigly events. Ask anyone who has ever thrown a party I’ve been invited to: I’m there, and then I’m suddenly gone. Sometimes, the only way people are completely convinced I even attended a shindig is that they tend to remember seeing something weird or excessively cool about what I was wearing. Someone will ask, “Was Helen there?” Then someone else will say, “I think so, because I remember seeing chicken-print Sloggers shoes under a bathroom stall door.” And then, someone else will say, “I’m pretty sure she showed up, because I saw someone wearing a cape out on the patio.” They tabulate the eccentric evidence, and eventually come to the conclusion that I had, in fact, been wherever I was invited to be.
