My latest idea for the leather pants? I'll wear them to Allen Whiting's open house, around the first Sunday of July or last Sunday of June or whenever it usually is. Everyone stands, mills around outdoors. Weather could be perfect for leather pants, cool to cold. From my observations over the years women in leather pants do not sit down nor do they want to. Stretch is the problem. Those men and women who wear leather pants and I'm not talking about riding leathers, as in motorcycles, who do sit down - stretched out leather in the rear area. Not good.
These pants are not, Thank God, skin tight. I had a friend, a fellow skier the year I ski-bummed in Vermont, Hunter Eng. Haven't spoken with him in so many years, have no idea what happened to him after he married a woman out on the West Coast. I was invited to the wedding, but couldn't make it. I remember doing an odd thing. I didn't R.S.V.P. in a timely manner, so I thought it logical to call. On his and her wedding day I called whatever number was on the invitation (invitations don't usuallly have phone numbers on them, do they?) and spoke with someone I'd never met or heard of. I wished them well. Funny, I remember where I was standing in the kitchen at 10 Kinnaird ST, Cambridge, but I don't remember much else.
Until I got married I had a real aversion to weddings. (No time to talk about Hunter Eng and his leather pants or how I feel about weddings these days. Later.) I had a real aversion to funerals also. I had to attend my step-father's funeral in 1977, which made it slightly easier to attend my mother's funeral in 1979. I've attended many, many funerals since of people I know/knew and never knew. Being married to a lawyer or attorney, if you prefer, who works with trusts, estates, which encompasses wills makes for attendance at a lot of funerals. At least it did over the last 12 years. Funerals have become much easier to take. Weddings I can usually take them or leave them.
Until my own wedding I didn't understand 1. How much they cost. (ours was remarkably inexpensive. $2,500 tops, I think) compared to people who spend $25,000. What a waste of money, I think, but to each his own. If it takes $25,000 to put on the type of celebration you want and you have the dough - Go for it. I think the money could be better spent on other things, but even people who work in the wedding industry have to make a living, I suppose.
The trouble with weddings or the thing that bothered me about them from the time I had to R.S.V.P. myself was this. You had to get "dressed up". I never liked getting dressed up. I never had anything to wear. I never wanted to spend my money on clothes suitable for a wedding.
Often I suspected the marriage was not going to last. Often they didn't. I didn't see weddings as happy events. I saw them as an end to each person's independence. Why would anyone want to get married? To legitimize the children? IS that necessary? Can anyone really predict and promise they will spend the rest of their lives with one person? At what emotional cost? What about death? Something omnipresent in my life. What about divorce? 50% divorce rate in the US was the statistic I read many years ago.
One of my father's favorite songs played by him on our family piano was, "Wedding Bells Are Breaking Up That Ole Gang Of Mine." I felt the pain in that music when I listened to him play the tune. I was under the age of nine.
Because I wanted to please my friends, they invited me I had to assume they wanted me there, I often would R.S.V.P in the affirmative, but on the day of the wedding I would look in my closet in a panic to find something to put on and find NOTHING TO WEAR. I would stay home rather than embarrass myself, my mother and my friends, by turning up in jeans or a denim skirt, my usual dress. This was my pattern back in the 60's, 70's.
For my family I did show up after the first wedding occurred and I displeased numbers of family. I missed my niece's first wedding because my mother, knowingly or not told me the wrong date. I didn't get an invitation of my own so I had to rely on her to tell me when it was. She told me it was on a Sunday on the Vineyard with the reception at the Harbor View in Edgartown. I thought Sunday was odd, but because I had a job which required me to work every other weekend and couldn't take a day off, easily, I replied to my mother telling her I can't make it.
Imagine my surprise when I was on the Vineyard the next weekend to find out the wedding had been on a Saturday. Duh! I was the only member of the family not there. My grandmother, in her 80's was even there, a big event at the time, and every one else, but me. Running into my brother at the Portuguese Feast was not pleasant. He didn't smile, didn't seem very happy to se me. I never explained to him what happened until the day after my mother died many, many years later. My brother and I were driving up to the funeral home to pick out her casket. For some reason I choose that moment to tell him what happened. I never did explain it to his daughter, my niece. My mother's dead, so is my brother. Too bad not to discuss it while we were all alive. I felt at the time my mother didn't want me to be there. I didn't get an invitation because, I assumed Deborah was saving on invitations, it is assumed in my family, or was, that of course the invitation is extended to my mother and silently to me. I never felt part of any family so I was not sure anyone wanted me there. I did find out by not going I offended numbers of people, I guess. It is hard to know what to do or it was difficult to know what to do. My choice was loyalty to work. I needed a job to support myself. I had no idea whether my family cared about me or not. I certainly found out from the cold shoulder I got from my brother that whether they wanted me there or not I was expected to be there, whether I got an invitation or not.
Funny thing was I met the guy Deborah was marrying sometime before the wedding. I was horrified, perhaps that's too strong. I was disappointed when I met him. I didn't take a liking to him. That's better. A Dentist to be. A friend of mine told a joke to him. It was not a very PC joke, but it was a funny joke as some non PC jokes were in the early 70's. This guy could not have been less amused. Something about him put me off, but I never mentioned it to anyone in the family. They got married without me and divorced without me. I did feel a little better about not attending when I heard the news. However, I felt terrible for my niece because she took the marriage vow thing so seriously. It was difficult for her, brought up Catholic with all the guilt that entails, to fail.
Gotta go. North West wind blowing, again. Better temps predicted for later in the week.
FAN
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