we left before the dancing

I bought a new feather pillow this morning. There's a whole story with that and never mind. This one will last.

I've been fighting all day today with be happy be happy because there is so much to be happy about and yet, it has just been one of those days when I'm not. My parents are in town. Interviewing. They were busy all but two hours of today with meetings and discussion and welcome to town barbeques. Tomorrow will be even more intense, and I'm going along to hear him preach (I know how that will feel) and I will put on a charming smile and shake hands and pretend I'm going to remember their names, when I know I won't.

I'm sitting in my room and I've taken off the wedding clothes I was wearing and when I stop and look around, I feel like I might be on the tail end of I'm not--I mean, on the tail end of my dip in mood--so there's no reason I won't like tomorrow.

I know I did love the half hour break when I cuddled into my mom's shoulder this afternoon. I forget just how much I rely on touch, but then along comes a week like this one, and I am very, very reminded.

I feel like--I am being bombarded. The wedding I was at today, it was a deluge. We fanned ourselves with silhouettes of the bride and groom cut from cereal boxes, and sat in a circle surrounding the two of them in the middle of a field. There was turquoise and poems and ribbons being woven, and fiddle music and a fist bump at the end of the ceremony--you're husband and wife, you may fist bump each other. Almost. The reception, well, I kept getting preoccupied by the dimming sky and the path of tiki torches leading away from the tent. I kept getting distracted by the fresh flowers in the center of the table and the way my skirt fell across my knees.

I was thinking about a year ago, and I realize that I've become someone else since then. But I still wish I could have been in two places tonight (scratch that, three), and had one of them be home.