When I got married, I wanted a lace huppah. I’d like to say this was a spiritually meaningful impulse: that I wanted our marriage space to be at once sheltered and open to the world. I don’t think that was it, though. I think I just thought a lace huppah would be pretty.
My first idea was to buy a swath of lace at a fabric store, but cheap lace was too ugly and expensive lace was too expensive--it takes a lot of lace to make a huppah. Then just a few days before the wedding, I was at the mall with my sister, shopping for her bridesmaid’s dress. We were in an Irish linen store, which for some reason had floral dresses (I wanted my bridesmaids to wear floral dresses, and they were impossible to find--just a year later floral dresses came back and were everywhere) (that’s me: always ahead of the curve). So anyway, there we were in the Irish linen store and all of a sudden I had an inspiration: a lace tablecloth! We could use it for our huppah and then it could be our tablecloth for Passover and other such lace tablecloth events and it would symbolize our home and our family and all that. See, I am capable of a spiritually meaningful impulse!
Right there in the Irish linen store I bought a very nice lace tablecloth and it made a beautiful huppah. Three years later, I lent it to my sister and it made her a beautiful huppah. Then it disappeared. Every time I needed a nice tablecloth, generally at Passover, I would remember the lace tablecloth, look for it, not find it, use the embroidered tablecloths from my grandmothers (which are very nice themselves), and forget about it again. This went on for years.
Saturday night at A’s wedding, I was gazing at the bride and groom and rabbi under the huppah, and suddenly something looked very familiar. The huppah was white, lace, scalloped on the edges, just like my tablecloth. Look, I whispered to S, I think that’s our tablecloth. You’re crazy, he said. No, I said, that looks just like our tablecloth, the one we used for our huppah. Then the groom said one of the bride’s lines and everyone laughed and the seven blessings were recited by five friends and a poem was read and the glass was stepped on, twice, and I forgot about the huppah.
It turns out that it was my tablecloth. I’ve tried to write about what happened next a few times, but it’s not working, and I’ve concluded that the only person who will really find it as hilarious as we did is K, so I’m just going to call her and tell her about it. Basically, after her wedding, my sister gave the tablecloth to A’s mom to save for her daughters, only nobody told me. But take my word for it, it’s funnier than that.
I tried to get it back, because really, I did have this vision of my huppah and my tablecloth and my family. I failed. A’s mom kept it for A’s sisters. She promises that once F and J are married, she’ll give it back to me for M and E, unless, of course, my sister’s kids get married first.
And you know, that’s kind of spiritually meaningful in itself.
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