The Wetting

It was a beautiful wetting.

The bride's four-year old half brother apparently thought that everyone was going to get wet, and was very excited. He confused "wedding" with "wetting." But the funny thing was that of course we all did get wet, very wet. There were streams of tears, and we sweated buckets in the un-air conditioned 87-degree heat. And because we did a fair amount of work, which is an understatement. At one point someone said the bridesmaids should have unionized. No one disagreed.

The city where I grew up has either four or five lakes, supposedly four real lakes and one honorary one. I spent the first 17 years of my life here, so I've always taken the lakes for granted. But driving around with the others who had never been here and were excited by the trees and lakes, I suddenly noticed how much we were surrounded by water and how beautiful it was. Everywhere we drove, we chanced upon another lake. The Friday before the wedding, the groom and groomsmen went to a water park and spent the day sliding through waterslides and crashing around in inner tubes.

The night before the wedding we sat with the bride on a small beach, looking out at the lake, talking softly. The bride waded into the lake, and afterwards we wrapped her in a towel and our arms. Then we danced silly dances in the sand, laughing uncontrollably and not caring who saw us.

The day after the wedding, I ended up sitting on the grass by a lake, a much smaller one with a lagoon I used to skate on in the winter, basking in the evening sunlight and chatting with two of the other bridesmaids who I am happy to now call my friends.

Maybe wetting was the right word.