Well, Little Sister's Jamaican wedding (or "Nupshalls," in my neighbor's West Texas parlance) is a fait accompli and we have all returned to our respective homes to recover from so much sun and fun and family togetherness.
The whole wedding partyThe bride and her attendant photographed like a page out of Bride Magazine, and the groom looked like he had just won the lottery--as well he ought. Little Sister is a catch.
Little Sister asked my physicist to walk her down the aisle, the aisle being a boardwalk from the swimming pool to the tree on the beach where we sat waiting. Neither Catbird nor the physicist saw that request coming and were both struck mute with tenderness. During the ceremony, in a tradition about which Catbird has much ambivalence, the physicist was asked who gives this woman to be wed, and his very non-traditional answer "her sisters and I" made all three sisters resonate with affection.
About that tradition: Catbird likes acknowledging the whole family in the transformative process of marriage, but oh how she detests the idea of woman as chattel to be traded, dowried, or outright given away. No worries, as they say in Jamaica; anyone who knows LIttle Sister knows she makes her own choices and doesn't sell herself short. Good for Little Sister.
