August 16
An Irish Wedding Revisited
M
olly sleeps this morning as her parents, per their promise, trav el down mem ory lane from their just-delivered leather sofa. Tim and I have memory-goaders galore, including our album o f wedding photos, two separate videotapes o f the marriage ceremony, and som e random 35-millimeter slides one or the other o f us somehow m anaged to squeeze o ff that strange and signal day exactly one year and four days ago. It had been my idea first to get m arried away from family, friends, ac quaintances. \b s, I wanted to deny them all the spectacle o f this AprilO ctober m atch, escape with my blushing bride in pink the hassle o f ar rangem ents, the hectorings o f Tim on preparations, the reception gos sip and the m ultitudinous m utterings o f “ it’ll-never-last” kibbitzers. Wouldn’t it be great to go abroad, say, for a runaway rom antic escapade? A m o n g total strangers? Tim agreed. “ I want to enjoy myself,” she said. “I don’t want to have to worry about whether other people are enjoying themselves.” A n d so the caper was jointly planned, suddenly and in rare total agree ment, and to this day neither o f us can remember what idea got first voice by whom. T h e wedding would be perform ed in Ireland, which Larry, though ten years a travel writer and three years an airm an abroad, had som ehow m issed in his peregrinations; specifically, the wedding would be in Sligo, where Larry had long wanted to go on literary pilgrimage dur ing the yearly International \eats Sum mer School in August. Father Dave, a priest Tim arie had kept in contact with, and w ho left his Pico Rivera, California, church most summers to visit his family in Ireland, would per form the ceremony—with an otherwise pick-up cast—in Sligo. To get there we’d fly to Sh an n o n a week before the planned wedding day, rent a car and drive up through Yeats country around G ort, to Galway, chase the sun to C onnem ara, and then weave northeast back to Sligo, arriving a com fortable two and a half days before the M onday m orning marriage. After the vows, we would drive back to Sh an n o n , fly to Paris (which Tim arie had n ot yet seen) for a honeym oon week, then on to London for another week (which came to include a few days’ try at parenthood), then fly back to Southern California. A n d the division o f labor? A ll the 146