April 28, 2007
Laundry
It was a summer wedding at “Chigger Ridge,” an outdoor setting far lovelier than its quaint, Tennessee name might lead one to believe. The early-middle aged couple had been cohabiting long enough to know what they and their bright atypical teenage son were getting into. Just the kind of wedding I prefer after all these years of so-called premarital counseling and watching so many later come unglued.
The groom’s country R&B band had set up near the picnic area already. His father and a friend had prepared and cooked the wedding feast centered around two exotic kinds of barbecue brought all the way from Kentucky. There were a few Roman Catholics among family and friends. Several, seeing me in clericals, expressed their pleasure that the couple had not procured “just any preacher,” but had at least got a priest or, they seemed willing to imply, a reasonable facsimile.
When CP and I were unloading the dryer earlier that morning to get out a black clerical shirt for the occasion, we’d lost one of her black socks and run out of time looking for it. Soon, we’d packed off for the occasion with our map of Tennessee back-country roads in hand.
I didn’t recognize the R&B wedding “march,” but most of the others did, so we got underway and into position in the small tent-like “chancel” there on the wooded hillside. The couple’s teenager stood by attending and, in his turn, read the lessons quite well. A friend read the prayers.
As I was getting into the more critical parts of the covenant liturgy and everyone seemed attentive to the gravity of the moment, I felt a strange sensation inside my right shirt sleeve. I straightened my arm at my side as something slid down and out the cuff. I looked down and there, at my foot, was CP’s misbegotten black sock.
Apparently, our lector was the only other one to notice. His puzzled awe coupled with his remarkably well-restrained convulsions made for one of the more memorable distractions in my usually failed attempts at pontifical solemnity.
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