Bob and I are wedding guest list safety valves.  We receive invitations, but everyone knows we don’t ever go  Most weddings seem to take place on Saturdays in summer and fall, and for all but the first two years of our marriage, we’ve worked Saturdays in summer and fall.

Folks do send us wedding invitations. Our friends and family fulfill their social obligation by including us, but then they get two open seats for the buffet, because we won’t attend.  I’m pretty sure most brides and grooms work this simple truth into their calculations.  

But Eileen and Pat are new to our lives.  They moved in next door to the cafe last summer, one of the brightest spots in one of our roughest years.  

They informed us a few months ago we were invited to the wedding.  We loved the photo of them on their “save-the-date” card.  

“That’s so nice that you invited us!”  I exclaimed.  “You know you don’t have to do that.”

“We wanted to,” explained Pat.  

“Yeah, but we don’t go to weddings.”

“You’ll go to ours,” replied Pat.

“Well, it’s on a Saturday,” I reminded him

“Saturday night,” he corrected me.

“Yes, but we won’t be able to drive there in time.”

“It’s only an hour away.  And you close at two.”

Here only one year, and they seem to have figured us out already.

As the months have gone by, we’ve actually started looking forward to the event.  We adore Eileen and Pat, and I’m honored that they’ve chosen to make West Fulton their home. Saoirse and Ula, of course, have already begun designing original outfits that they’ll be wearing to the event.  Bob will pull out a button down and khakis and clean up good.

That leaves me.  

There was a time when I had a closet with lovely summer outfits, dresses that showed off my muscled arms and hugged my curves and flared out when Bob would turn me as we danced. 

But life changed me.  Aging changed me.  My arms grew a layer of fat.  The flat stomach bulges, no matter how active I am, not matter how careful I am with what I eat.  I can’t see behind me to know what my tush is doing, but I suspect things have a mind of their own back there, too.

The dresses that used to fill my closet stayed in residence til they were threadbare.  I never replaced them.  My life no longer required them.  Wool sweaters and jeans got me through the winter, tank tops and quick dry work pants through the summer.  A chef coat on top is now my version of dressing up.  

But it occurs to me that a wedding will require something different.  And I don’t know where to begin. I look around me at the women my age and older, how artfully many of them adorn themselves with fabrics, textures and jewelry to create beautiful, soft, feminine effects.

I look online at the options, and grow overwhelmed.  I can’t tell what will fit.  I can’t tell what will look good.  I can’t keep all the options straight in my head.  I can’t imagine the time it would take to compose these beautiful looks, or the exhaustion I would feel adorning myself, and then removing the ornaments and putting them away.  I can’t think of where I would store such things.  And I can’t, in truth, bring myself to care deeply enough to spend the money. 

Why am I putting myself through this?

I could show up in a chef coat and work pants and Eileen and Pat probably wouldn’t care.  (Although someone might ask me to find out of there’s any more chicken parm…)

So, then, again: Why am I putting myself through this?

Because a wedding makes me remember my own wedding, when I skipped over all bridal traditions and slipped into a red velvet dress Bob and I found on a sale rack, and we ran off and exchanged our vows after a snowstorm on a cliff’s edge over the ocean in Maine.  I remember his hands on my waste, the doting glow in his eyes.  

A wedding makes me remember every flouncy dress I used to pull on, transforming from farm girl to his beautiful maiden with no effort whatsoever, and he’d smile down at me, and we’d turn and spin and dance, often with nowhere to go but our own lawn.  

We are 23 years into our marriage, and there is much joy and delight in our days — working side-by-side in the kitchen, listening to bird calls in the woods, planning our day over cups of coffee beside the headwaters of Panther creek, sitting out on the porch in the evening with the girls and their friends, laughing and teasing; having lunch with Mom and Dad at the cafe, singing and strumming with our friends on music nights.  I know Bob loves me, and I know we are the best of friends.  But there are moments when I wonder if there’s a way to recover that easy youthful femininity that held his gaze so deeply….

Business in the cafe is slow on Saturday, and I consider using the time to attempt another round of online shopping.  Then a family of four comes in.  They are staying in the airbnb upstairs, and I don’t recognize the language they are speaking.  The mother wears a head scarf.  The grown daughters do not.  After fixing their breakfast, I stop over to chat. 

This is their second time coming here.  The daughters are refugees, and the parents have been able to fly in from Iran for a visit.  They wanted to bring them to Sap Bush Cafe.

I am lost in their story…Unsure whether to leave them to eat in peace, or to badger them to tell me every detail of their lives.  

“When you are a refugee, you start over with nothing,” one of the daughters explains.  “It doesn’t matter what you were in your home country.  When you arrive here, you are nothing, and you must start again.”

“I held a masters degree and worked in a lab in a university,” the other daughter tells me.  “Now, I’m a clerk at home depot, and the customers insist on checking my math.”

I am lost in their stories.  I want to understand their journey.  I want to understand what it is like to be reduced to nothing but your memories.  

And I forget about the quest for a pretty dress.  And I forget about the bulge in my belly and the fat on my arms.  I enjoy talking with the father as he practices his English, telling me about his garden and his fruit trees in Iran.  The mother takes me over to our yarn, and shows me pictures of the rugs she has made, with both silk and wool.  

I am so moved by their journey, honored that, in this limited time they have together, they would share it with us.  

They slip out the door too soon.  

I sit quietly at the espresso bar and sip a coffee, thinking about all that just happened, when a pair of arms wraps around me from behind.  Bob’s long body folds over me until his lips find mine.  

“My God I love you,” he tells me.  

I look up at him in surprise. 

“I love that you care so much.  I loved hearing their story.  I love watching you be you with people.  You just amaze me.”

The following day we head down to the city for his next doctor’s appointment.  While there, we go into an outdoor store that specializes in zero-impact clothing.  They have three dresses in their product line.  I pick the blue one, and we spend the rest of the day ambling through the city.  He goes to his appointment, and I go to pick up lunch before we meet the train.  I am walking down fifth avenue when I see a giant picture of Marilyn Monroe plastered to the window of the Museum of Sex.

I stop and stare at her for a long time, captured in her prime, all dolled up with those sultry bedroom eyes, forever young, forever a sex symbol.

And I remember when I had those lines.  I remember when I had the wardrobe to celebrate them.

And then I think about that family, about their being reduced to nothing.  We will all be reduced to that.

The curves are temporary.  The clothes are temporary.

The acquisitions and achievements are temporary.  

Each day we age, we only become what the universe asks us to become….maybe slipping away from the grip of the ego, and into lightness of being, applying our life force to love and creation.  

Marilyn Monroe never got to do that.  She’s stuck there, eternally youthful.

But I think I will tiptoe into the dressing room and try on this new kind of beauty that reveals itself at midlife — This self-acceptance and joy that comes when I stop worrying about the bulge in my belly, and recognize that I am on the path that I need to be on, and my body will do what my body needs to do to age through this life.  And while here, I get to be loved unconditionally by a man who still has that doting glow in his eyes.

Did you enjoy this? 

Please share this podcast with friends & family.  This really helps to get the ideas to spread.  Better still, you can help make the magic happen for as little as $1/month by hopping over to Patreon and looking up Shannon Hayes.  Or, if it’s easier, you can also donate to support the podcast by sending a check to Shannon Hayes, ℅ Sap Bush Hollow Farm, 832 W. Fulton Rd, West Fulton, NY  12194.

And that’s a really important thing to do, because all of this— the podcast, the blog, the novels and books and the creative recharging that happens over fall and winter—   are a result of the support of my patrons on Patreon.  And this week I’d like to send a shout out to my patrons Julie Mason & Julie Carpenter.  Thank you, folks!  I couldn’t do it without you!