Back to blogging

I haven't been posting because I've been gone. A week ago today I was in Charleston, South Carolina. In the morning I went for breakfast at the Holiday Inn where my son-in-law is the new Director of Food and Beverages. (I'm sure he's doing a good job, but last Saturday he was out of cranberry juice.) I spent the afternoon at a water park with three of my granddaughters. (I went down a big slide.) Then we went back to our cabin and all dressed in our finest for the wedding of our oldest grandson. I have gone from being the mother of the groom to being the grandmother of the groom in just three short years. There isn't too much difference except that you stay seated in the church after the ceremony and wait until your picture is taken. Apparently the wedding planner thinks that you might be too old to traipse up and down the aisle more than once. There were four grandmothers at this wedding which is unusual, I think. Both of us grandmothers of the groom are relatively young. We married at nineteen or so and our children did also. We were in better shape than the other two. Our youngest granddaughter, Amanda, was one of the two flower girls and she was beautiful in white and blue with a wreath of flowers on her head. Our oldest granddaughter, Jenny, was a bridesmaid. She was a more sophisticated beauty in a vivid medium blue strapless gown with her blond hair swept up high on her head. Our grandson, Jeff, who is usually quite a storyteller and a charming jokester, was deadly serious and I think quite emotional as he said his vows. Our favorite grandfather of the groom was the crossbearer and got to march in first, before the priest even. Wedding parties in the South are larger than Midwestern ones, I guess. There were thirty-two in this one. They represented almost a third of the wedding attendees someone said. The ceremony was held in the oldest Catholic church in Charleston or South Carolina or the South or something like that. The reception was at the old Securities and Exchange Building. It has a dungeon in the basement where the British held prisoners before the Revolution. Charleston is a beautiful city, rich in history. Since my daughter and son-in-law are moving there, I may get a chance to visit it again. This time we visited Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor. I was surprised at how small it is. The island it is on was formed by dumping gravel from New England on a sand bar over a period of eleven years. It is only two and a half acres in all. We also spent a lazy afternoon at Magnolia Plantation on the Ashly River. On an earlier visit we had walked with our daughter among the elegant old mansions of the city and along the battery at the waterfront facing Fort Sumter....What impressed me most at the wedding of our grandson was the mother of the bride, my daughter. She had been under some pressure from several sources to wear a "mother-of-the-bride" type dress because it was a somewhat formal, evening wedding. She didn't want to--it's just not her style. She chose instead a very simple cream sheath and wore it with a string of pearls. She was easily the lovliest, most elegant woman there, in my unbiased opinion. One woman came up to me and said that she could have picked me out of a crowd as Claire's mother because we resemble each other. Claire always hates to hear that , and though I was flattered, I can't really see it myself. Claire has big eyes and mine are rather too small. She has full lips that are a deep red color without lipstick like her father's are. She doesn't eat much and does her Pilates. She is almost too slender, and me, well.... But sometimes people say that we have similar gestures and a way of speaking. I can see that. And as I watched her and smiled at her across the crowded room, I kind of sadly felt another similarity. Claire and I are both lonely in a crowd and really just want to go home.