A Balm To Parched Skin
Watching Two New Friends Get "Married"
“It’s kinda cool that you get to be here as a new friend,” Olivia told me.
We were standing behind the bar under a small oak tree, music half heartedly echoing from the barn as tracks skipped between classic 90s RnB and Hyperpop. It was late by this point and as Olivia talked, though she had nothing but kind things to say, I had the feeling she might not remember what she said tomorrow. She told me she was thankful I came out to bartend, to help finish making the drinks last minute, how her wedding band was kinda classy, and how excited she was to hang out soon and have the best summer ever—the normal things one says when they’re surrounded by loved ones in the midst of their wedding party. But, she probably doesn’t remember this, I told her I was the one who was thankful.
Earlier in the day, we all sat in a meadow, staring at Olivia and Jack as they read their vows, not legally binding, but pure and honest as their love. Listening to them speak was like a balm to parched and blistered skin. Their devotion to each other, so simply present that this ceremony wasn’t needed for them to confirm anything to anyone, let alone each other. As Jack’s Dad quoted Joni, “We don’t need no piece of paper from the city hall.”
As I handed out drinks, watching other couples, some talking about their upcoming weddings, it became abundantly clear to me that love in so many forms was hardly gone. The past few months for me seemed to push against this. It wasn’t that love did not surround me—I am thankful in many ways it often does—but It had seemed an impossibly difficult thing to grasp, inevitably a challenge to give or receive fully. But, to be a witness to this wedding on Olivia’s family’s land in Calistoga, and not a participant—not yet knowing them well enough to know their love, and what specifically about each of them is so spectacular, it felt like I was witnessing love as an embodied light, hitting friends and family and making them weep at simple statements. I was outside this, seeing a big love first hand. Seeing a love that wasn’t a challenge, but just a pure blessing. The two just fit together perfectly.
Driving home, Sonoma County heat already heavy in the mid afternoon, my fatigue deep and eyes already tender from the beauty of that wedding, I decided to turn on Tyler Childers’ “All Your’n” where his voice seems to shake as he sings the words, “I’ll love you ’til my lungs give out. I ain’t lying.” And I started to weep on highway thirteen. I was crying out of joy, to see as I had only just begun to see before that night, through the kindest of new friends, others finding new and good loves, and now this—the marriage of two wildly good people, Olivia and Jack, who’s love is unshakable, like petrified redwood.
Congratulations Jack and Olivia. Thank you for being.
