LA Whirl

The real reason for our journey to LA was a wedding for one of my husband's LA colleagues. She is normally a very reasonable person, but then the most reasonable woman turns into something quite unreasonable when getting married. Or rather, she turns into a SheBride, the operative word being bride since once the event, a culmination of months and months of planning, ends in a few short hours. Hopefully for the groom's sake, once the bouquet has been tossed and caught by some other hapless singleton, she will return to her former reasonable self. I thought watching the groom and bride seal the deal in that long-held tradition of kissing, 'and so it begins.' See, for all the marrieds out there, the fun truly begins once your lips have touched. But so be it for any of us cynical marrieds to thwart her certainty that married life will be more than she had ever dreamed. Yes, more being the key here.

I know she had spent countless hours planning this event with painstaking details. And since we're in Southern California, she had planned with the reassurance the wedding day would arrive with the sun rising at its usual hour and setting at another expected hour. It seemed Mother Nature had something else in mind as the hundred or so guests shivered in our various states of undress or dress of evening attire. Gale force winds,which felt like a Hurricane on the precipice we were perched, were making the waves of the Pacific resemble a tsunami. The rest of the event like all weddings had normal reasonable people drinking too heavily, the barely edible meal gobbled up in a wine or hard liquor fog.

What struck me about this wedding was the hodge podge of religious symbols the couple along with their Minister had decided upon. There was a reading from Rainer Maria Rilke's, "Letters to a Young Poet," which the officiant erroneously referred to as a poem. Yes, Rilke was a poet, but this little tome, much beloved by those seeking artistic freedom--usually devoured and read as religion for those who are seeking validation to pursue whatever 'artistic' pursuit--was read along with the expected poem from Pablo Neruda, whose poems are all a meditation on love, and St. Paul's Letter to the Corinthians. This non-denominational, religious potpourri was capped off with an American Indian blessing. Neither the bride or groom are Indian, that any of us had ever known. This service is much like most California outdoor weddings where religious symbols are chosen and discarded to fit some homogenized religious smörgåsbord. With that said, this service leaned a bit more toward the Christian half, which I'm assuming was the religious background of both groom and bride. If they were of the truly United Nations approach to religion, I'm sure a Hindu or Sanskrit reading would have been included. But alas, this service's only nod toward the non-traditional--signaling a wee bit of Liberalism for the couple--was that strange Indian blessing.

The flight home was interminably long. When LA was home, the flight Eastward seemed bearable since I was usually thrilled to be heading back. The return flight back to LA never felt long enough since I was usually reluctant to go back after however many days away from the sun soaked city. This time, the flight there felt quite short, but the flight home was another story. Each of us, despite having a good enough time, was anxious to get home. For my son, his impatience had less to do with home as the two suitcases crammed full of birthday toys from his LA friends. The five hours felt like ten. There is that moment when you're trapped on an airplane where you can understand those stories of people losing their sh** on a flight, having to be restrained.

As our driver headed toward the Mid-town tunnel, Manhattan in all its steel glory stood, welcoming us back home after our long journey. I could only think about that indelible image in Woody Allen's "Manhattan" where the city seemed to burst forth from the ground in all its beauty with Gershwin playing in the background. And now, this place full of so much mystery and beauty is our home.