Believe it or not, the first thing I did when I walked in the door was check my stocks, then check for info on the new version of the Opera Wii. I was shocked to find out that, after a week of being in the spotlight of a whirlwind wedding, this blog was also Member of the Week. My reserves of gratitude were tapped again, and I gladly give thanks to this wonderful community! April, I am your love fool!
The joke, however, is on all the wedding couples who avoid April 1st. We had a day with significant cost savings, few competing couples, and a fortune-ripe day according to the chinese lunar calendar. And it was. For the first time in over a decade, all of Xstine’s family, otherwise disassembled by circumstance and affairs, flew in from all corners of their lives to meet, repair, and rebuild their bonds. Their grudges, divorce, resentments, and regrets melted away as we held what was literally a Hollywood wedding to them. We melded their asian cultures into our Americanized version, and it was beautiful and unthinkable.
For my side, I was assaulted in force by the closest friends, dearest relatives, and people I haven’t seen in over a decade. Teachers, principals, even the mayor of Cerritos were on hand to exalt their wholesome sense of extra-family. Over 220 of my parent’s circle came, and I was roasted with a taiwanese rendition of a country line dance by a middle-aged troupe choreographed by my mom, and serenaded by my dad. One must not underestimate the hydroelectric potential of an asian karaoke flood at peak enthusiasm.
I think the details of the night’s atmosphere will be better told when our dedicated photographer, a generous friend of my dad, gives us the extravagant pictures. For now, this poem I recited to Xstine during the banquet will have to do.
Love, in struggle, is defined,
not just in the vines of fate entwined.
We fought,
we taught,
we wove the bond we wrought,
for no one inherits the divine.
No, love is mortally confined
between the tenuous breadth of lines
of life,
of strife,
of fractures drawn by trials
in earth eroded over time.
So, marriage in love is beheld,
not simply a ritual tale to tell.
Betrothed?
Beloved?
These vows belie our beliefs
that love defies and dispels.
Love, by trust, is refined,
a lens of ancient sands combined.
Our acts,
our pacts,
our fossils not lost ‘neath the past,
we still see silently in our minds
that love is forgiveness applied,
a daily layer of demands denied.
Absorbed,
adored,
a force of feelings reforged,
clairvoyant for our heart’s mind’s eye.
But union is not stone nor sand,
not stem nor leaf grown in light bent by our own hands.
We strove
to grow
this seed to passioned grove,
and wield the fruit as lovers can.
The fruit of love is transitive,
a word that takes what persons give,
and shares
and bears
beneath its lush and blossoming care
the love for the soul, infinite and sensitive.
