Slightly Delayed, Essentially on Track

I've now been in three wedding parties--two of which happened this summer, and one of which happened on Saturday. And in my experience, after each one of these has ended--following so much lead up, preparation, excitement, problem solving, and dress fittings--I've been left with the same feeling: that these girls better have picked the right man, because this is who they've got in the quiet when the party finally ends. (I remember hearing a horrifying story about a former colleague who'd wanted so much to have a wedding that she'd found the first red-faced Kiwi who would tolerate her, picked nuptial package B at some Marriott near the freeway in Pleasanton or similar, did the deed, which amounted to some sad facsimile of what she's dreamt of as a little girl, and then immediately wondered WTF she had just done and why.)

So anyway, here I am at the Destination OAK sports bar at the Oakland airport, with my once-lovely navy ribbon-wrapped bouquet (freesia, dahlias, rosemary, and some other things I can't recognize in shades of red, orange, and fuschia--all looking much worse for the wear by now) by my side on the shiny granite bar, very excited and hopeful for my glamorous girlfriend who picked the right one and is now a Mrs., in the next phase of her life, enjoying the quiet with her man on a lavish honeymoon in Italy. And I'm making my own way home--slightly delayed, according to the monitor, but essentially on track. Ahem.

The wedding itself was a fab spectacle, complete with the kind of wild, flailing dancing that people can get away with at weddings; fun funny-face antics in a black and white photo booth; and the whole late-night crew getting kicked out when the folks in charge closed the place. San Francisco City Hall, with its dramatic marble center staircase under its opulent rotunda, is an extraordinary space.

This is the first time I have been to the Bay Area in years. (After all, my 'Tross lives in this hood, and I couldn't stand the heat, so I stayed out of the kitchen for a while.) And as I was coming over the Bay Bridge from the city earlier, I was wondering: What's more beautiful than this place? And not just because of the bay and the hills, and Coit tower, and UC Berkeley's campanile on the horizon--but because there was a time when I lived here that I believed anything was possible.

Literally anything--like how a kid thinks he could count all the grains of sand on the beach in a day. Like I believed that I could carry on a kooky five-year sham of a relationship--with due respect to the man who made it such an intense adventure--and emerge as if no time had passed, because I'd be forever young, natch. That, for the same reason, I didn't need to bother with sunscreen or eye cream (not that I do that now either, but I compensate with guilt). That I could study only the things at Cal that fulfilled my existential curiosities, and not need to bother with anything that might actually result in me learning some marketable skill, and still be able to land some great job out of school because my excellent character and potential would be obvious to and desired by any employer. (In reality it was eight months of insufferable, soul-crushing unemployment after undergrad that made me feel very small and unwanted.)

And I wouldn't have done those years any other way. And remembering that blissful anything-is-possible time in my life makes this place--the Bay Area with its Coit tower and its campanile and its bridges and its Fell Street--for me even more beautiful. And while I don't still believe it is possible to count all the grains of sand on the beach ever, let alone in a day--I still believe that anything, within reason, is possible for people who believe it too.