The Wedding of my son Matt and Melany:Part One

Wedding week began with 22 inches of snow. When I opened the back door on Monday morning December 27, the snow was nearly knee high. And, because our plow guys didn’t come to clear our long driveway until Tuesday morning, we were snowed in for 24 hours. My number two son Mike--on holiday from Villanova Law School -- got out to go to “wing night” at the Allendale Bar and Grill by tramping to the end of the driveway to be picked up by his friend.

My sister Marian called from Arizona to say her flight had been cancelled because of the weather back East. She and her husband Benny came in a day later –taking a plane to Philadelphia, a train to Newark and finally picking up their rental car at Newark Airport. They arrived Wednesday night around 10. My sister Margaret B. her daughter Monica and the 3-year-old twin granddaughters came in from Maryland Wednesday afternoon. I got paella for dinner for them from the Market Basket. That evening, I had to go to a board meeting at the adoption agency I work with. I finally tried on the gown I had bought in October at Neiman Marcus Last Call for the wedding. It was way too long. Margaret took up the hem for me.

My sister Nora –a four-year ovarian cancer survivor--was in the hospital in Syracuse. On Christmas Day she had been running a fever of 103.7 and she was admitted. She had been looking so forward to the wedding of her nephew Matt and Melany, but it seemed clear she wasn’t going to be out of the hospital in time for the Friday night New Year’s Eve wedding. She asked whether her son Nick could Skype the ceremony.

By Wednesday, when I asked Nora whether Nick and his sister Kendall were coming to the wedding, Nora said,” They’re discussing it,” not a promising reply considering that I had already booked two hotel rooms for Nora’s family. Also on Wednesday, my son Matt called and was upset that he couldn’t get in touch with his high school friend and groomsman Matt O, who was living in Colorado. Matt O had apparently not been measured for his tux. “This is bad, Mom,” said Matt. “He’s off the grid.” I said it would all work out, and Matt said I was being an enabler for Matt O.

On Thursday, I took Maeve and Margaret to the hairdresser. I was a little spacey and distracted, because there were so many people in the house and so many people to consider in planning the day. We took several cars to the hotel where we were staying in Livingston. I stayed back to clean the house and get some private time before entering the whirlwind. I finally got dressed for the rehearsal dinner and programmed the GPS to take me directly to the wedding site—the Crystal Plaza in Livingston – for the rehearsal at 5 pm.

When I talked to Nora Thursday, she said neither her son Nick nor daughter Kendall was coming to the wedding. “Kendall and [Nick’s girlfriend] Jane are fighting, and Nick doesn’t want to drive a car with two fighting women,” she said.

But, amazingly, Jim’s brother, Uncle Billy, had come down from his apartment in the Monticello, NY area for the wedding. He was going to come to the wedding as of early November, then said he wasn’t coming around Thanksgiving because his 99 weeks of unemployment had run out. He again said he was coming early in December, and actually was in New Jersey a week before Christmas after his girlfriend threw him out briefly for gambling away $150 of her money at a local Indian casino. Then before Christmas he said he couldn’t come because he might be able to get a day of work at the Yiddish hotel where he sometimes works security. [ He likes the job at the Yiddish hotel. He’ll take some of the diamond merchant guests for a ride in the hotel’s 4-wheeler, and then laughs when he plunges them down a ski slope. “They scream like little girls,” he tells me.]

Billy wanted to bring his arrest record on charges of stealing a car when he was younger. Billy apparently stole the car in concert with his friend Tommy O., who spent the 30 years before his recent death as the boyfriend of Cindi, the current fiancée of Billy’s and Jim’s brother Kevin. I guess Billy wanted to reminisce with Cindi about the old times, the good times with Tommy, whatever. Jim told Billy he didn’t think that kind of reminiscing was a good idea.

Meanwhile, early Thursday, Matt had reached his friend Matt O, who said he had worked 3 straight 12-hour shifts at his job at PF Chang’s, but that he had been measured for his tux and, if Joseph A. Banks lost the measurements, he would get measured again. “Matt O is back on the grid,” Matt told me.