it's okay to be unstable

So I was a reader in my cousin's wedding weekend before last, which is fine. I am the go-to wedding reader. I'm not sure why, but it's something that I always get asked to do. If I hired myself out to do this, it would probably be very lucrative. Hmmm. There's an idea - especially as one can be ordained in the Universal Life Church for 50 bucks. It really couldn't be simpler.

But it probably helps to actually be on time if you're going to run around marrying people. I arrived in Delaware too late on Friday for the rehearsal, but not the dinner. My ability to arrive on time for dinner is legendary. In this case, the beach traffic just sucked and I was lucky I made it as early as I did. 

After dinner, my cousin announced that the priest - who is married, which in my lapsed but still oddly traditional Catholic mind does NOT allow him to be a priest, but whatever he wants to call himeslf is fine with me - wanted to talk to me about my reading situation. "I don't know what he's worried about," she said. "I told him you're an educated person and you know what you're doing." Have her fooled, don't I? So I took my apple crumble dessert over to his table and talked to him.

He was sitting at the table with his wife. Together, they looked like a couple you might see on the Carnival Cruise commercials - middle-aged, disposable income, tanned, but not too perfect. At least that was my first take. 

"Hello. And thank you for taking part in this event," he said. "Have you read in public?"

"Yes, a million times," I answered, which amounted to lying to a priest but hoping that the fact that this was clearly hyperbole would only make it an exaggeration and not a total untruth.

"She has," my aunt added. "She reads at weddings, family funerals, pretty much anywhere."

The way it was all sounding, I had visions of myself screaming out scripture and poetry on the Metro, in elevators, at the 4th of July fireworks. "Hold me back - I'm a READER!"

He implored me to speak slowly - always a challenge - and warned me that the wind and the water (she was getting married outside by the bay) would "impede the flow and projection" of my voice. I assured him that anything short of a monsoon is rendered powerless by the flow and projection of this voice. Volume is just. not. a. problem. Then the conversation got odder.

"I just want you to know that if you need to express emotion, it's okay," he said.

"Okay," I said. "I think I'll be fine. I'm pretty comfortable reading in front of people."

"No," he said. "I mean, if you feel like you're going to break down, just go with it. It's better to express it than to repress it."

"Thank you," I said. "That's very reassuring."

Break down? Would he be shooting us with pepper spray? Was someone on deck to speak now, not willing to forever hold his piece? Who knew? I mean, I'm a cryer, that's for sure, but he had no way of knowing this, and I knew my cousin hadn't told him. I've been known to tear up while reading, but I've never had a problem working through it. And this was a first reading from the Old Testament, the one about God making Eve from Adam's rib, which I was fairly sure, at this point in my life, would cause no emotional reaction to at all. Besides, I was very, very chill this weekend. I was, ice. cold. I was Andre 3000.

He continued staring soulfully at me.

"Seriously. I just need you to know that it's okay if you're unstable."

I thanked him for being the only person in my life who has ever said that to me and meant it. And then I took my apple crumble and backed slowly, slowly away.

(PS My cousin's wedding was gorgeous and I'll have everyone know that the girl who read AFTER me cried. Not me. I was, quite simply, chill. Chill and loud. Score!)

Comments

[joanna]

maybe the first clue was that he was a married priest. Sounds like he wanted to push you into a breakdown!