A Still Life…A Life Still

Twelve minutes before the wedding ceremony, my nephew Andrew emerged from a victorious Tennessee TV huddle – now a groom with a satisfied gleam behind his orange-rimmed sunglasses.  He had waited for this: to show me what he had created out of the sari borders I gave him after my last trip to India.   And there he was, striding up to me in sartorial splendor.  Silk brocade that once floated through the lovely homes of Mumbai now fitted his lapels, lined his jacket, shaped itself even into a neck tie.  He had envisioned it all, down to the Tennessee-orange socks,  his own unique fusion of the Vols and the Vedic.

After the ceremony, the lovely meal, a dance with my brother who had officiated the nuptials- I walked out on the sprawling lawn in the early light of evening and called my father who was so palpably not there.  My brother had ended the ceremony with my father’s words – ones the family knows by heart – and conjured his presence there in quiet benediction on the day.    But now, as I heard my father on the other end of the phone,  the golden tongue sounded disturbingly like a shovel chomping through gravel.  I reported on the wedding, his son and grandson and great-grandson all taking their places in the circle of life.   He tried to calm my fear about the chomping sound in his voice. I hung up and sat under the darkening sky.

Inside, the dance music was really kicking in now.  Bridesmaids were flinging off their heels. Andrew and Sarah did dips and swings to Luckenbach Texas in their finery;  he picked up the guitar and began to sing his own song.   The littlest Hull  pranced in the center of all the moving parts – at 10 months old he stole the floor.

I watched the last light crawl down into the wooded distance.  In the wide-open evening, the chilling air, there on the spongy grass, I felt the turning.

The great wheel of life moved solidly on.

~ by Susan on 10/01/2013.

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