Emily is getting married this afternoon I think, slowly shrugging off a night’s sleep. The train whistle sounds like church bells to me this morning. I’ve never heard them this way before.
We don’t hear the train so much from our place in North Carolina, but here in Colorado their calls surround us like jays. I’ve lived in a few places where the tracks are so close it feels like they will burst through the bedroom wall. Like the drone of a propeller plane, a receding train is melancholy. Both bathe me in nostalgia, a tinge of regret as if life is passing me by. I’m often stationary when I hear them, while they move on without me, above and beyond.
Bob and I are staying in an airy room over the bustle of Rob and Sharyl’s busy home. We’ve come to regard this space as ours, we’ve stayed here so often. It’s an hour after dawn, the kids are tumbling towards the exits, headed to school. Traffic streams outside.
Bob’s three daughters, Emily, Amy, and Molly were lovely in their dresses at the rehearsal dinner last night. As the evening progressed, they became inseparable. Fifty of us mingled on a spacious deck at Mariana Butte’s Golf Course overlooking a craggy outcropping referred to locally as Devil’s Backbone. Tyler’s parents were hosting a five-course meal with designer beer pairings. Family had flown in from everywhere, more coming today for Emily and Tyler’s wedding.
I marveled at the magnificent young people, all so well put together. I might have been walking through a glam magazine. Colorado ranks high on fitness rankings so everyone was beaming with health, tanned and toned in their summer outfits. Jewelry sparkled in the evening sun, and many balanced babies on their hips, miniature manifestations of the good life. Em and Tyler’s baby Nolan was passed around, the Where’s Waldo of the evening. The older folks were aglow. Everyone loves a wedding.
I gazed into the fading sun at the sandstone cresting a ripple of geologic time. Emily would have been six years old the last time I rode my horse along the Devil’s Backbone. Now she’s a grown woman, and the horse has been dead a year.
We arrived at Lone Hawk Farm before noon on Wedding Day and stayed until after sunset. There were little jobs for family to get involved in, nothing too demanding. We ran out of work hours before the wedding. I began to suspect Em’s good friend and wedding planner Jamie had contrived this languorous, pastoral day as opportunity for family bonding.
There was an enormous red barn, and a spacious cabin between barn and orchard where the bride and her maids were taking turns getting their hair and makeup done. A cooler of champagne slowly turned into empty bottles. We nibbled on dipped strawberries. The mood was contagiously frivolous and gay. Baby Nolan played on the carpet, attended by a bevy of love-struck maids. This room was the heart of the day.
I pick a bright, red apple and walk to the end of the driveway to prop a hand-painted sign against the rock wall at the entrance to the farm. It says, “Welcome to the wedding of Emily and Tyler.”
I hear the engine of a small plane, only this time it seems to be standing still as I stride towards the defining moment of the day. In an hour or so, everything will be a little different. This day will forever be “the day Em and Tyler got married,” and everything else either before or after. My mind begins to whirl with memories of the girls growing up, our summers abroad, painting their finger nails, teaching them to ride on Jesse the Wonder Horse.
I put the sign in place and wander back towards the rest of the family. I bite into the crispy fruit, savoring this point in time and my solitary thoughts.
