Fired Up

Does this outfit make me look fat?

When opportunity knocks, I seem to always be in the bathroom. 

Or, as will be the case this coming Saturday, a thousand miles away for a family wedding when the entire local fire department -- truck and all -- will be visiting my Starbucks. If the fees for changing flights weren't so steep, I'd skip the rehearsal dinner Friday (heck I'll see them all in six months for Thanksgiving; I can just watch the video) and stick around here a bit Saturday just for the chance to be lifted (hoisted?) onto the truck by one of deep dark suburbia's finest. The mere thought is making me swoon. Me, in my slightly too short fire engine red dress and slightly too high spiked heels (after all, I'm going to have to head right from the airport to the ceremony), a buff young stud steadying me with his large rough hands around my hips as I get ready to view the machinery. Watch the updo, I'll squeal, tossing my head back as he places his helmet on me.  Fuck it; I really wanted to wear my hair down anyway.

After I saw the flyer, I asked my morning fireman Starbucks buddy whether there was any way they could push things back a week. Shockingly, he laughed, apparently thinking I was joking (or nuts). In his wildest imagination, I suppose, he could not conjure up the images I was conjuring up. Of course not; to him, I'm just the tired looking old broad in sweats who taps away on her laptop every morning, squinting because her eyes have long outlived their shelf life. Ha! He hasn't seen me in the red dress. (And if he does, with any luck, his vision isn't so good either.)

Ah, well, back to reality. My baby cousin (who just turned thirty this week -- yipes!), the wobbly little toddler I propped up on my bed one day long ago so I could deck her out in all sorts of fake costume jewelry, is going to be heading down the aisle this weekend with, I'm guessing, not a fake bauble within striking distance of her bouquet. We all bring truckloads of our own baggage to weddings, depending on how lucky -- or, as is often the case -- unlucky we have been with the whole lifelong commitment thing. As cynical as I am, though, I remain optimistic for my cousin and her fiance, who seem so natural together. Deep down, I am a hopeless romantic, fully able to push aside thoughts of reality -- kids, money issues, middle age, boredom -- and believe wholeheartedly in the soul mate thing. Even if it begins when you're in your twenties and neither one of you really has any sense of who you are or who you might become.

It's no wonder, more than two years into a costly divorce, that I might find the idea of a quick hook up in a hook and ladder a bit more appealing than the prospect of something permanent. As expensive as weddings can be, the financial and emotional costs don't hold a candle to what you need to lay out to tear it all asunder. Maybe if they did, folks wouldn't rush to the altar so quickly. But where would that  leave us? There's something nice about the whole young nuclear family thing, the glue that keeps everything working relatively smoothly as kids and parents alike struggle through the challenges of growing up. Even if it all starts going to shit at some point, it still seems like a pretty good system.

The other night, I enjoyed a pizza dinner with my own nuclear family, us and our three kids, still somehow glued together even though the nucleus has unraveled a bit. I reminisced about how my husband and I used to share a pizza (I'd peel off the top, leaving him the bottom). "I always hated that," he said.

"So that's what it's all about!" my son piped up. Maybe he's right. Maybe it was all those little indignities, the splitting of a pizza vertically instead of on a horizontal plane. Why didn't he just say so back then? Hmm, come to think of it, he did. I'm sure he committed his fair share of petty crimes, but I can't even remember. Ha, that's bullshit! Of course, I remember each one, but there's no point in dwelling on it now. After all, Illinois is a no fault state. (I tremble to think what divorce would cost in a "fault" state.)

We've grown older, my husband and I, and I like to think we've both grown up a bit. No doubt, we'd do things differently now than we did back then, if only we had the chance. We don't, but my cousin and her fiance and every other young couple does. My advice to them? When opportunity knocks, don't get caught in the bathroom. And, to him in particular, never leave the seat up!

Do I believe in the possibility of love and commitment everlasting? You bet. For now, though, bring on the firemen.