By CAROLINE BODKIN
The day before my birthday, I attended a close family friend’s wedding in Seattle. Last weekend, I went to another up in Malibu, and I’ll go to another before the month’s up. Yep, it’s August, high heat of wedding season. Soon it will be back-to-school season, then the holiday season, then spring-cleaning season and onward. To everything turn, turn, turn, there is a season.
And at the wedding, after we’d eaten dinner, I sat idly at the table, watching a large pack of the Seattle-based bride’s tattooed friends refill their beer cups from the kegs. The bride laughed with them about old times, and it occurred to me that today her life was changing.
Old times were old, and the time ahead was something new for her. Her life had entered into a new season.
On my right sat Georgia, the bride’s great aunt. She was born in Italy and had never been married. On my left sat the best man, the bride’s brother, with whom I’d grown up. Georgia, a wonderful, joyous, warm person, looked at me and asked, “How old are you, now?”
“Twenty-five tomorrow.” Followed by the inevitable response, “So it’s almost your turn.” And she nodded up at the bride. “I missed mine. I was back in Italy during my marrying season and by the time I got back to America, at your age, I was an old maid.”
A different era, I suppose. At this point, the brother piped up. “Trust me,” he said, “taking your turn early can be disastrous. You’re better off, Georgia, you’re happy.”
He spoke from experience. At 21, he met the girl of his dreams, took up her religion, married her, built a house with her and then found himself, one year later, looking into that house, his house, from outside, watching his wife with another man.
They divorced a year ago, but she still refuses to give up his last name (even after he offered her money to do so). The same delusion that led her to believe she was ready to settle down now convinces her he’ll come back some day. It’s tasteless. This is the same moral code that allows Britney Spears to marry a man who has two illegitimates who she just met.
The brother sits back in his chair and sighs, “I want my wedding season to start over again.”
Some events change life’s course irrevocably and obviously. Others cause change over time. Some winters come decidedly with a first snow, others descend gradually, with a slow cool.
When the young man looked into his house and saw his new bride with another man, his life was changed, decidedly, forever. Even if he gets remarried, even if he never sees her again, he will never forget how much that hurt. I’d imagine this will become a life lesson for him, (for that he is lucky) and if his wedding season does come back, he will be wiser.
Georgia, on the other hand, says she missed her turn, her wedding season came and left without her. But did she miss out?
As I listened to other stories of her life, it was clear she’d lived fully, through life’s other seasons. And my guess is her turn came around again, but she didn’t take it. We’re compelled to do these things in life, these things that humans do, like get married and have kids and blaze trails. But are we lesser people if we opt out of one or the other?
Can our lives be full even if they miss a season or two? Is the disaster of a turn taken early better than a turn missed?
I don’t believe all seasons come in the same colors, or at the same time, in life for all of us.
You cannot ignore the importance of an individual’s personal passages. It is not safe to assume we should all experience the same things, in the same order.
Life presents choices, and our power lies in making them. People will say you are late or early, that you missed out or jumped too soon. But seasons change in each life, at different times, for good reasons. Let that timing be determined by you and the events in your life.
Extend your summer, prolong your fall, and if winter is too cold, then let spring be yours ahead of time. (Caroline Bodkin lives in Los Angeles. She).
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on August 16, 2004. Read the original PDF.