Okay okay okay: tomorrow afternoon, my youngest first cousin gets married. That sounds pretty simple, right? It’s anything but: a few years ago, my cousin Tony joined the Army or the National Guard or something, went off to mechanic school and nothing happened for a long time. Finally, he was deployed to Iraq just as his father – my Uncle Frank – was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Uncle Frank is married to Auntie InExcelsisDeo, my father’s sister, and this diagnosis happened the fall after Dad died, so an entire Italian family ran screaming for about six months. Vern Yip redecorated Auntie’s house as a Christmas special and my cousin Sandy put together her wedding in a flash so her father could walk her down the aisle. The Army or the National Guard or something sent Tony home, which was a total shock to the woman he married in judge’s office on Tony’s way out of town, and they decided to get married in front of his whole Italian family, her biker gang and Uncle Frank, who’s building furniture and looks pretty damn good for a guy who was supposed to be dead two years ago, and two weeks ago now, Tony’s legal wife and shiny new real estate license holder Poppy announced on Facebook that she’s pregnant. Goddamn if I know where to shop for an event of this magnitude.
Tony and Poppy are getting married in a Friday afternoon ceremony somewhere near the Jersey Shore, but inland. It’s close enough that you can smell the ocean, but sometimes you can smell that from my house and we are talking about the Atlantic. Also: I’m not sure if it’s indoors or out, so who knows what we’ll smell. This wedding is also in the middle of August, when no one who’s anyone without a back-to-school shopping list would be caught dead in a a retail clothing establishment without a pea shooter and a garbled manifesto. Today, my sister Daria took pictures of half her plastic-wrapped wardrobe. Brace yourself: nothing says Poor Impulse Control like crazy people at a cocktail hour.