Retrospect

Retrospect is twenty-twenty, therefore, in retrospect, 2020 was not a great year to plan my wedding. We set a date and started to make plans in early 2019. However, this story starts quite a few years before then.

When I was young I could usually be found covered in dirt in my mother’s garden, singing songs to myself while swinging on the swingset, or, when the weather didn’t agree, dancing throughout the house. Growing up in the suburbs of Chicago meant the latter happened more often that I would have liked. It was on such a day, snowy and blustery, that my dad walked into the kitchen and found me doing what 5 year old me would call "pirouettes worthy of The Paris Opera Ballet". I paused my dancing to look over at him, and found him smiling, the light from the small kitchen window reflecting in his periwinkle eyes. I remember wondering if mine shone the same way, my eyes being nearly identical in color to his, but he interrupted my musings to say “It’s never too early to learn how to dance.”

I, being a child, was immediately offended, and responded by telling him I knew how to dance. He disregarded my pouting and instead walked over to me with both of his hands out, palms facing up.

“Of course, you’re a great dancer, but I'm talking about dancing with someone, instead of by yourself.” he said fondly.

I was still skeptical, but took his hands as he told me to stand on his feet. He was wearing the same brown loafer-style shoes he wore most days, and they seemed so big compared to my tiny toes. Even with the added height I was just barely eye level with his stomach, but, nevertheless, he taught me to dance, slowly moving his feet to show me how to step while swaying softly back and forth. The sparkly nail polish my sister had painted my nails with earlier that day shimmered in the beam of sunlight streaming through the window, the sun bright in the way it only is when it reflects off the newly fallen snow.

It was twenty-two years later, standing in the kitchen of my own house that I received a call from him. It was barely a month before my wedding and Covid19 was as rampant as ever. In spite of that I answered the call joyfully, caught up in the excitement of my upcoming nuptials. It being 2020, my wedding was turning out very different than anything I could have imagined, with our guestlist going from 150 people to 35 close friends and family members, and instead of the venue we had booked, the ceremony and reception were taking place in my own backyard in the gravel area between my driveway and my chicken coop, and the wedding party all bought masks to match the attire, yet, I was giddy all the same. I never wanted anything extravagant, I just wanted to be surrounded by all the people I love. Unfortunately, my excitement came to a screeching halt as my dad started the conversation.

To give some context, my soon to be husband and I lived in Western Washington State, much to the chagrin and confusion of our “live and die in the midwest” families. They didn’t understand the way we fell in love with the mountains, the trees, the cool rainy winters, and the Salish Sea. So when we announced we would be having what we called a “destination wedding for everyone except us” it was not without its problems.

My dad is young, however four children before the age of 30 and a Midwestern meat and potato diet had not been great for his health. The treatments for Covid 19 at the time were too risky in conjunction with his medical history and current medications, so he was calling to tell me that he couldn’t be there for my wedding.

I felt like a child again, upset that my dad couldn’t make it to my soccer game because he worked overtime on Saturdays. I was crushed, but what was worse was hearing him so heartbroken. It was the first and only time since moving to Washington that I started to second guess my decision to leave the Midwest. I held it together through the rest of our phone conversation, then broke down the second I hung up. My husband-to-be held me until I was coherent enough to do the only thing I could think to do: call my sister.

My sister has always been more driven and outspoken than me, sometimes to a fault, but that’s exactly what makes her so reliable when I’m in a rut. She picked up almost immediately, and when I told her what was happening instead of just trying to console me, she jumped into action. She started brainstorming the safest way for our dad to travel, looking up statistics on the internet while simultaneously spewing ideas. In an attempt to cheer me up she threw in some golden ideas like “We’ll tie him to the top of my car, if we drive fast enough Corona Virus can’t get him!”, and “We could kayak the whole way, down the Mississippi, around the horn of Mexico, and right up the coast!”. By the time we hung up I was feeling better, but not quite optimistic.

That was until the next week, when my dad called me saying my sister had used her stern voice and an impressive list of statistics (complete with sources) to convince him there was a “safe as can be expected during a pandemic” way to get him to my wedding. In a later conversation he would tell me that she didn’t need her stern voice, he was easy to convince, sources or not. He would have given anything to walk me down the aisle, even if the aisle was a pathway through my gravel backyard laden with flower petals. He would have to convince his Primary Care Doctor, but he could use a stern voice, too, and he had sources.

Three weeks later, at an ungodly hour of the morning, I was sitting in my bedroom with the bridal party drinking mimosas when I received a text from my dad. He was boarding the plane and would text me as soon as he landed. He wanted to spend as much time enjoying my big day with me as he could before his flight back at 5pm that same night.

It wasn’t anything near what I could have imagined my wedding day to be. It wasn’t extravagant, it wasn’t at the venue I had originally picked, and, in true Washington fashion, it rained for a bit mid-day, however, in spite of all that, it was perfect.

I spent the day surrounded by my closest friends and family, I married my best friend, and I finally put that dance lesson from 22 years prior to good use when my dad took my hands to sway with me for the father-daughter dance. In retrospect, a 2020 wedding did have some redeeming qualities.