When I wrote about something unexpected arising on wedding days I was thinking about the random drunk guest hitting on the married bridesmaid or the ministers’ Freudian slip, not the ring bearer falling in the irrigation ditch.
But let me back up to the rehearsal dinner.
During the block-party luau, we took turns watching Elias careen down driveways with his walker, the old point your toes and roll technique he’s mastered during this extended trip. In typical Elias style he fell more than once only to rise and do it again.
On Grandma and Pop’s watch, also known as the parents of the bride, he fell and hit his mouth on his walker. Neither Nick nor I saw the crash but we counted teeth and checked his mouth. We confirmed he bit his tongue but seemed unfazed.
The next morning-- the dawn of the big day-- he woke with a gigantic fat lip. The inside of his right upper lip, swollen and purple, made his face lopsided. His expressions not his own.
Since he swatted the ice I tried to hold to his lip, I fed him vanilla ice cream for breakfast followed by an orange Popsicle. He smiled and said "popical," but I still didn’t recognize him.
And then to make the transformation more dramatic Nick and I took him for his first professional haircut at of all places the Alaska Style Hair Salon, a barbershop decorated with pictures of grizzlies, glaciers and bearded men holding halibut. With swollen-faced Elias on my lap, I asked the barber to just trim his hair and even-out my rough cuts for the wedding.
After gently trimming the sides, the white-haired former Alaskan man said, “Time to take some off the top.”
My stomach sank as Elias's blond waves fell into my hands. He did not trim. He chopped. My baby’s locks. And returned an unrecognizable little boy. On the day of his Ring Bearer debut.
My tears fell with his curls as soon as I shut the door to walk to the truck. Now he really didn’t look like the Elias I knew.
Luckily the wedding didn’t start till 6:30, which gave his lip time to de-swell, and me time to adjust to his altered look. With Elias dressed in a white shirt and light blue plants for the 3:30 photo shoot we had three hours to keep him clean. This meant no crawling and no falls. We took turns hovering. Hyper-vigilant. Stressed. Me especially.
(Forget parents of the bride: Parents of the Ring Bearer--Hollywood has missed the opportunity to capitalize on the woes of this particular wedding role.)
An outside ceremony, the aisle consisted of gravel and stepping stones lined with orange marigolds from a garden to the front porch of the groom’s parents’ house. During the rehearsal, Elias could maneuver over and through the stones with his walker but he took a few too many detours into the aisles and he stood dazed without walking for too long. So instead of his walker we opted for his walking poles with Nick’s guidance. When his moment came I forgot all about the fat lip and cropped bangs
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I cried different tears, proud and humble, when I saw my baby--I mean little boy--walk down that aisle. Not only did he make it the whole way with only one social visit—"Way to go Elias," Judy said and Elias stopped looked right at her and repeated, “Way to go Elias"-- but he even sat on the steps for a few minutes and said aloud, “Doing a good job,” before he became too active and distracting. At this point Nick scooped him up and delivered him to Nana and Papa in the back row.
Which brings us back to the irrigation ditch.
During the reception I delivered Elias to my parents with the words, “Do you mind watching him for a while?”
“We expected this,” my mom said with a smile.
“Well, it is your last day with him for a long time.” I said.
My parents followed Elias from the backyard, down the driveway, to the other side of the dead end street where he discovered the ditch and his favorite activity of throwing rocks into water.
“You got him?” my Dad asked before turning away, before Elias fell in, before my Mom jumped after him, before my Dad carried a soaked boy back to the party.
“Yias go nimming,” he told me as he shivered in my Dad’s arms.
“We screwed up,” my Dad said.
“You’re not going to trust us anymore,” said my Mom, “We made it through the whole bike trip with no accidents and in two days look whats happened.”
We joked about all the grandparents being off-duty. “You’re fired,” I laughed as I snuggled with Elias, warm and mostly dry,
dressed in his back-up party clothes. With wet tussled hair and tired eyes he looked like the Elias I remembered. My baby. Who later fell asleep next to the dance floor across Grandma and Pop’s lap, redeeming them for the swollen lip.
Elias woke late Sunday morning and said as he stretched, “Went all the way in. In ditch. Went nimming with Nana…Nana, Papa…” But Nana and Papa were already on the road to Seattle, preparing to fly back East, not to be seen again till March. They weren’t here to know they’ve been pardoned. That their role awaits them.
And that we’ll feel the vacancy every time Elias, the former Ring Bearer, calls their name
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