by Sydney Avey
Laura is wearing a knee-length white wedding dress. She raised the subject on one of her brief visits to approve the menu of prime rib, roast potatoes, candied carrots and cranberry-walnut gelatin mold.
“It’s not my first wedding, so at first I thought about a wedding suit in a holiday color.”
“But it’s Mike’s first wedding. When you make your entrance, you want him to see a beautiful bride, am I right?”
Laura blinked her eyes, blushed, and put a hand over her mouth to hide her wide smile.
R
Despite the pounding rain, a brief power outage, and a mix up over who was supposed to pick up the wedding cake from the Los Altos Bakery, we all manage to be seated in the living room when Laura makes her entrance through the atrium. From the satin bow that secures a short veil draped over her chignon, to the simple neckline of her dress that displays her lovely collar bones, to her silvery white stockings and silk pumps, Laura is a vision floating from the moonlit atrium into the warm glow of candlelight surrounding Father Mike.
David plucks an ancient Babylonian Jewish wedding song on the oud, the lyre harp he brought from Israel and played for Danny on the day he arrived. Memory of another young man flashes in my brain, Pete, Valerie’s college boyfriend who played a guitar at my mother’s memorial service. Ten years ago, I bristled at the intrusion. Today, I settle into my chair and enjoy the haunting music that hearkens back to antiquity, warmed by the unexpected family connection this young man has brought to our cultural mix.
The catch in Father Mike’s breath when he sees Laura tells me she made the right choice. He extends his hand, pulling her to his side. Then in pure Father Mike fashion, he lifts both their hands and pirouettes her, stepping back to admire the woman God gifted to him in his mature years, when he was past hope for such love. Sophie leads the applause.
“Isn’t the applause and the dance supposed to happen after the vows?” Andy says.
“‘Tis true,” Father Duncan, Mike’s old friend from the Saint Andrew’s Society stands before the fireplace with Mike and Laura, ready to perform the ceremony. “It’s a bit out of order here, we are. Not surprisin’.” He claps Father Mike on the shoulder. “Would ye like to take this woman to wife, then, lad?”
“I would.”
And he did.
David and Sophie
David and Sophie
1965
We are in the news again. Triophonics is featured in the business section of the San Jose Mercury. The headline reads Trio of Entrepreneurs Making a Big Sound. The inaccuracies in the headline alone spark lively conversation in the family.
The news writer dubs David, Danny and Sophie as the Peter, Paul and Mary of sound technology, attractive young folk with a hot new acoustics detection product that draws musicians to their door, checkbooks in hand. Posed in a group hug for a publicity photo, they look like kids from the neighborhood who just found gold under a rock. Here’s the problem. They aren’t a trio. I’m not even sure I could identify the duo in this mix. Would it be David and Sophie or David and Danny? Sophie enlivens the photo and makes for good copy, but her passion is elsewhere. David is the heart and soul of the business, but Danny is the magician who can sell it. And that’s the second problem. It turns out that a methodology for automatically adjusting sound levels and reverb in a performance space is not that marketable to musicians, who don’t own checkbooks. It is, however, highly attractive to the well-funded military. This is a fact that won’t make headlines and could cause division between David and Danny.
Roger and I discuss the news article while he is dressing to go to work. David has talked him into taking on the role of CFO. Roger assures me his job is temporary; that he’s just there to set up accounting systems and lines of credit for the boys; that he’s out of there as soon as they find an experienced replacement. I have no high card to play. Valerie is starting to complain that I’m not available enough to help her with Miren because I’m so involved with Elinor and her foundation. My art supplies languish under layers of dust in my studio. How did we get to this place?
Sunday dinner is our only constant. This afternoon, the kids finally open up about their plans.
“I have a decision to make.” Sophie’s eyes sparkle. She reaches for David’s hand. Nothing sparkles on her finger though, so this might not be the announcement I’ve been waiting for.
“David has offered me studio space in his building.”
I look around the table to see how the others are taking this news. Only Valerie sets her fork down and leans forward.
“And, Santa Clara University has offered me a dance scholarship and a chance to direct student productions.”
My eyes travel from Sophie’s shining face to David’s composed features. His eyes are on Sophie. He knows she has already made her decision.
Sophie takes a deep breath and squeezes David’s hand. “Triophonics needs all of David’s attention right now. I’ll be around to attend the parties and schmooze the investors with David, but while he’s getting the business off the ground, I will be launching my own career.”
David pats her hand. “We think this is the smart way to approach our future.”
While the others pepper David and Sophie with questions, I lean back in my chair. Obviously this young couple doesn’t subscribe to the “love is all you need,” philosophy. They are planners. I look over at Danny. Where does he fits into the plan?
R
Working with Elinor on her mental health foundation has proved more challenging than I imagined. I sit at my art counter where I should be working on a new set of collages. Instead, I’m tapping a pencil on a fat notebook stuffed with research on the effects of the Community Mental Health Act. My heart pounds, my stomach jumps rope off rhythm, and my skin itches. This is not what I want to be doing.
I walk out on the patio and try to slow my breathing by taking the brisk morning air into my lungs. Drawing my sweater tight around my shoulders, I walk down to a bench Roger has installed under the plum tree. Carved on the seat back are words from Psalm 91: He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty.
How I’ve wrestled with the state of Scott’s soul, the burden of mental illness he carried, the pain he caused so many people, mostly himself. Compassion packed in a tiny seed in my heart has broken through its hard shell and struggles for light. I cultivate the thought that Scott found some shelter with us, even as we failed. I pray for redemption, for God to provide shelter for Scott now.
Light teases new buds that appear on the tips of branches we forgot to prune this year. I sit in silence, and I hear God’s voice. It’s time to move.
A Honeymoon
A Honeymoon
The sun warms the patio and plums drop from the tree before the rumblings of real change sound in my ears and throw me off balance. Sophie has taken an apartment in Santa Clara, near the university. David lives with several roommates in a sprawling loft apartment above an auto repair shop in downtown Palo Alto. I shake my head often at the thought of a young man with David’s prospects living like a beatnik in a crash pad, but Roger reminds me that David was brought up in communal living.
“His mother tired of that. From what little David says she’s enjoying her new life as a property owner.” I lean against the doorjamb while Roger pulls a golf shirt over his head. Triophonics hired Roger’s replacement just as I was about to have a showdown with him over his work hours.
“I’m sure the day will come when David wants that too, but remember Dee, if he wasn’t building Triophonics he’d be pulling all-nighters in a dorm at Stanford.”
I forget that David is still essentially a college student on a fast learning track.
“Do you think David will ever go back to Stanford?”
“As a student? No, why should he? To collect an honorary degree? I’m sure of it.”
“So you approve of the course his life is taking?”
“One hundred percent. To get in on the ground
floor of a new industry, what could be more exciting?” Roger sits down to pull on his socks. I walk into the room and sit down next to him on the bench at the end of our bed.
“Roger, do you miss working?”
Roger puts his arm around my shoulder and gives me a hug. “Not as much as I miss you when I’m working.”
I cock my head and shift my eyes upward into his handsome face, tanned by the sun during the golf games he’s resumed since leaving Triophonics.
“That sounds glib.”
“No, Dee, I mean it. I’ve always loved the work I’ve done, but I know it’s time to hand it over to the next generation. This is our time now.” He folds me in his arms and we fall back on the bed, snuggling and giggling. Then I remember that the door is open. I peek over Roger’s shoulder to see Valerie standing in the doorway, holding Miren. She clears her throat dramatically.
“Uh, there are children present.”
I shoot up but Roger just rolls over on his side and makes a face at Miren. The baby hides her face with her chubby hands and peeks through her fingers at him.
“Yes,” I say, “Miren and Roger.”
“Mom, can you watch Miren while I run to the grocery store?” Valerie strides across the room and plops the baby in my lap.
After she’s gone I tell Roger what troubles me.
“I feel like we don’t have our own life.”
Miren slides off my lap and sticks her head under the bed to see if she can spot Puffy. Roger gets up and goes to his desk. He picks up a mailer I spotted a couple of days ago in his mail tray and meant to ask about. The return address is a travel agency. He pulls out a watermarked envelope and waves it in the air.
“Start packing sweetheart. We are going on our honeymoon. And when we come home, we’re going house hunting.”
Danny and Ursula
Danny and Ursula
In the midst of our preparations for the trip to Europe Roger has planned for us, Danny has been making his own plans. Ursula’s work permit has run out. She has to go home. It will be six months before she can return. Danny plans to follow her to Germany, meet her family, marry her in Paris, and whisk her off to Navarra to introduce her to his family. I’m so glad I had a daughter and not sons.
As self-involved as Valerie was at Danny’s age, she at least has some idea of the effect her actions had on me. Danny appears to have given no thought at all to how Ursula’s parents, and Alaya and Elazar, will react to a hasty marriage between two young people from different cultures and religions. Danny is Catholic. Ursula is Protestant. They will be married before their parents have an opportunity offer any wisdom on the pitfalls that may lie ahead. When Roger and I get wind of this plan we don’t hesitate to speak up for the parents involved, but Danny is prepared for this.
“Aunt Dee, this is exactly why Ursula and I are eloping. We don’t want to give our families time to talk us out of what we want to do.”
“And what is it you want to do that you think your parents will object to?”
Danny is silent for a moment. “We want to be Americans.”
At once the irony strikes me. Anger over America’s growing involvement in the Vietnam War is causing widespread disaffection among our young people, but these two see only the dream.
“We want freedom to be who we want to be, do the work we want to do, make money, buy a house, make babies.”
Danny’s cola-colored eyes brim with excitement no amount of unsolicited advice can drain off, so I don’t offer any. I know something about dreams. If I had pursued mine earlier, I might not have lived such a lonely life. But then, I might not have had Valerie and all the blessings of family I enjoy now, so who’s to say? My heart fills with admiration for the courage and hopes these two have. Perhaps I can help pave their way with my sister.
Roger, Danny and I put our heads together over our date books and figure out that Danny and Ursula can travel to the farm the week Roger and I plan to be there.
“Danny, think about this. Why not let your families be part of a small ceremony in Paris? You don’t see it now, but if you want to maintain ties with your family you need to include them in the big events in your life. I’ve seen enough of Ursula’s love for children to know she got her nurturing soul from somewhere. Good parents will come around.”
I can’t hold back that bit of advice. Danny takes it well and I add writing two letters to my long list of preparations for what is becoming an increasingly complicated itinerary.
Valerie tries to be cheerful about the chaos in the house. Danny is packing up, leaving boxes in the garage he’ll retrieve when he and Ursula return. Roger and I run around renewing our passports, buying new luggage, giggling like little kids planning a tree house adventure.
“Mom, I don’t mean to be such a Grinch, but I feel like Cinderella stuck by the hearth while the rest of you go off to the ball.”
I look around the room and take her hand in mine. “It’s a lovely hearth.”
“I know. How come my world feels so small in this big house?”
“Well, you’ve been pretty consumed dealing with everything that’s happened and learning to be a mother. Things are starting to settle down now. Babies are wonderful, but they’re tedious as well.”
“I know! I love being a mother but I miss...”
“Free time? Work you can set aside when you get tired?”
“Yes!” She looks at me like I’ve just named a new constellation in the night sky.
“Maybe it’s time to look for some other moms to talk to. I think there’s a moms group at church.”
“Is that what you did?”
“No. But I wish I had. You girls today are so much more community minded than I was raised to be. Don’t try to be a mom all by yourself.”
The quiet in the house shatters when Danny steps on Puffy’s tail on his way to the garage with an armload of boxes. Puffy yowls and runs. Boofus chases her, knocking into a plant stand in the atrium, sending a potted palm crashing to the tile floor, triggering howls from behind the nursery door. A few weeks ago, I would have told Valerie to sit and let me get the baby. Now I sit and let her go.
R
Roger and I toured Europe for a month. We made some adjustments to our plans to allow Danny and Ursula time alone with Alaya and Elazar before we all met up in Paris to witness the civil ceremony in Saint Germain. Ursula’s mother came to Paris to stay with Ursula during the required residency period and helped plan the wedding lunch at a neighborhood bistro after the short ceremony. What should have been simple turned out to be complicated and expensive. Danny had to fly back to the States a week before the wedding on Triophonics business. He barely made it to the town hall office where an official conducted a brief ceremony in French that the Europeans understood but the Americans did not.
Alaya and Elazar were unhappy that there would be no Catholic ceremony and Ursula’s parents were equally unhappy that there would be no wedding at their Protestant church, but both sets of parents were won over by Danny and Ursula’s devotion to each other.
Two World Wars have devastated European churches. Faith traditions are being abandoned; the lovely cathedrals left standing are becoming relics of the past instead of beacons of light for the faithful. I pray that God will raise up a new generation of men like Father Mike and women like Laura who will speak the words of love and peace we so desperately need to hear.
R
After Paris, Roger and I spent our remaining vacation at the farmhouse in Navarra. While Elazar took Roger around the property and into town, Alaya and I made plans for her visit to California.
And now she is here.
Alaya sidesteps moving boxes stacked in the hallway. She follows me through the atrium into the living room where Valerie has installed Miren in her playpen. Miren stacks plastic bowls in noisy concert with her mother’s pot-banging efforts to master a French recipe in her new James Beard cookbook. I stop to kiss the top of Miren’s curly head as we pass by, and Alaya slips a cookie into her
chubby hand. Miren kerplops the cookie into a pink plastic bowl and then topples over and buries her face in the shallow dish.
“How I wish I’d had a daughter,” Alaya says as we make our way out onto the patio.
“Well, you have two chances at a granddaughter.”
Domeka has settled into a quiet life in Argentina, where he met and married a local girl. Still, the minute those words slip from my lips I know what my sister will say.
“I will not have the privilege of watching my grandchildren grow up.” She thinks this is a privilege I am throwing away, but she doesn’t say that.
Roger and I tried to time the announcement of our plans to move to Pacific Grove to coincide with the migration of our young relatives toward their new futures. It makes sense to me that we should give the new parents privacy. Of course, Valerie does not see it this way.
“Mom! I can’t believe you want to move so far away from your granddaughter!”
“Valerie, you knew this living arrangement was temporary. It’s time Roger and I establish our own home.” I explain the Biblical concept of leaving mother and father and cleaving to husband. I point out how close we will be, a two hour drive at the most, and how dedicated Roger and I are to being part of the young people’s lives, children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews.
“Then why are you moving so far away?” Valerie hikes Miren up on her hip and glares at me.
“Oh sweetheart, you are a beautiful wife and mother. You are so far ahead of where I was when I was your age. You have the good sense to appreciate what you have. I need to do the same. I need to build a life with Roger, but that takes nothing away from my love for you and Miren. I will always be here when you need me.”
“Just not when the laundry is piling up, or I need to run out to the store, or I can’t find a babysitter I trust...” and we both started laughing. “Okay I get it. You want your own life and you think if you beat feet over to the coast, a little distance will protect you. It won’t. I guarantee it. You won’t be able to resist making the drive several times a week to hang loose with little fat cheeks.”