I changed into a green vintage dress in the car on the way to my college roommate’s wedding. My friend was driving, and we had all the time in the world to smoke cigarettes and complain about conventional decisions like weddings, but somehow we hadn’t factored in our fashion choices. I remember very little about the wedding except that the bride’s living room was filled with wrapped gifts containing pots, pans, and a blender. I only knew about the groom through the letters she sent from Senegal during the year when most of us studied abroad. “We’re much too young for marriage,” I told my friend in the car, but when we got there, I clocked the gifts and approved fleetingly of this grift.
Several other friends from college got married soon after we graduated and invited me to witness them saying yes to something so uncertain—a future unfolding at the speed of dial-up internet. I traveled to Oregon for one wedding between two friends I really haven’t spoken to since. In Portland, I tried on a gorgeous pair of deep red Lucchese cowboy boots, wore a bright orange wig at a costume shop, and sat close to my college friends on park benches, talking in earnest philosophical whispers as we often did in the late 1990s. I tried to live down the inappropriate decision to wear a white dress to the wedding.
The one and only time I was a bridesmaid was also the last time I ever dyed my hair black. The bride urged me to hide the strands of silver that appeared as early as sixteen. I wore the fancy gown, danced in the crowd on the dance floor, and smiled at her proud parents. My parents also attended in a rare public sighting as a pair. But after I came home, I took off that satiny black-and-white dress, flung off my bra, and noticed makeup stains left from the blush they made me wear. I later donated that dress to Goodwill, thinking rightly that I’d never have another reason to wear it.
I tried on a wedding dress once only because my mother brought home several she acquired from another thrift store and wanted me and my sisters to wear one. The dress I tried on slipped off at the shoulders, and I ran around the house in a floppy ponytail, taking long looks at myself in the bathroom mirror. I couldn’t see myself getting married then, in my mid-20s, or ever, even though I must have imagined it at least once or twice when I was younger. I think I was even engaged for a summer.
Some weddings made me wonder why I was ever invited. It feels strange that I’d witness such a life-changing event and then never hear from or see these friends again in the long arc of a life. But other weddings are postcards you send back to yourself in the middle of things when you’re trying to remember that life is worth celebrating.
Like the fine lace latticed on the dress of my beautiful friend married in Italy. That stunning fruit torte with fresh cream, her parents smiling in smart attire, glasses clinking, the terrace, the pool, the church. Like my best friend in her burnt orange silky jumper at her wedding in the woods, sunlight streaming through the forest at dusk, a field of green grass, me and my niece prancing as the guests over there kept dancing, a gathering of resistance, of parachute dreams, remembrance. We got iced coffees on the way home; it was a good day’s work, to celebrate friends who had taken steps in their lives to insist on another day of love.
Transit Slips, #12
Several other friends from college got married soon after we graduated and invited me to witness them saying yes to something so uncertain—a future unfolding at the speed of dial-up internet. I traveled to Oregon for one wedding between two friends I really haven’t spoken to since. In Portland, I tried on a gorgeous pair of deep red Lucchese cowboy boots, wore a bright orange wig at a costume shop, and sat close to my college friends on park benches, talking in earnest philosophical whispers as we often did in the late 1990s. I tried to live down the inappropriate decision to wear a white dress to the wedding.
The one and only time I was a bridesmaid was also the last time I ever dyed my hair black. The bride urged me to hide the strands of silver that appeared as early as sixteen. I wore the fancy gown, danced in the crowd on the dance floor, and smiled at her proud parents. My parents also attended in a rare public sighting as a pair. But after I came home, I took off that satiny black-and-white dress, flung off my bra, and noticed makeup stains left from the blush they made me wear. I later donated that dress to Goodwill, thinking rightly that I’d never have another reason to wear it.
I tried on a wedding dress once only because my mother brought home several she acquired from another thrift store and wanted me and my sisters to wear one. The dress I tried on slipped off at the shoulders, and I ran around the house in a floppy ponytail, taking long looks at myself in the bathroom mirror. I couldn’t see myself getting married then, in my mid-20s, or ever, even though I must have imagined it at least once or twice when I was younger. I think I was even engaged for a summer.
Some weddings made me wonder why I was ever invited. It feels strange that I’d witness such a life-changing event and then never hear from or see these friends again in the long arc of a life. But other weddings are postcards you send back to yourself in the middle of things when you’re trying to remember that life is worth celebrating.
Like the fine lace latticed on the dress of my beautiful friend married in Italy. That stunning fruit torte with fresh cream, her parents smiling in smart attire, glasses clinking, the terrace, the pool, the church. Like my best friend in her burnt orange silky jumper at her wedding in the woods, sunlight streaming through the forest at dusk, a field of green grass, me and my niece prancing as the guests over there kept dancing, a gathering of resistance, of parachute dreams, remembrance. We got iced coffees on the way home; it was a good day’s work, to celebrate friends who had taken steps in their lives to insist on another day of love.
Transit Slips, #12
