Two of my closest friends got married on Sunday. There was drama in the form of thunder, lightning and heavy rain; beauty in the bouquets, Kaitlyn’s smile and the pastoral New England setting; and tenderness in Andrew’s words and the love they have for each other. I was honored to be there when they met one fall evening in 2005 and when they celebrated their marriage last weekend. Throughout it all I’ve been honored and blessed to be a friend of theirs. They have been the source of so many smiles, laughs, and cheers, and they’ve provided the most incredible support when I needed to shed some tears.
I took photographs at their summer Sunday wedding and they thanked me with a beautiful bracelet inscribed with a quote by Mahatma Gandhi – “be the change that you want to see in the world”. Andrew and Kaitlyn ARE the change I want to see in the world. They are friendship, love, generosity, happiness, and passion personified, and I know the world would be the place I want it to be if it embodied who they are.
I don’t recall how we got on this topic, but I do remember saying I don’t kiss and tell. That’s not really where the story starts, but I honestly don’t know where it starts. Does it start when we met back in Boston? Does it start when my plane touched down in L.A. last Friday? Did it start on some late night around our kitchen table in Brookline after one too many shots of bourbon? Ever since we all started hanging out it felt like we just landed in the middle of friendships that had no beginning or end. Peter describes us as the family we chose. So when I got the message that we were getting together in L.A. for Dave’s birthday I knew I had to go.
We’re all scattered around the world now. I’m in Portland, Garrett is in L.A., Peter never stays in any one place for too long, Dave has just returned from Spain, and Margaret is still in Chile. It’s just over a year since we were last together, all of us, on the Vineyard for our annual Memorial Day weekend. We kind of knew then that it would be our last Memorial Day for at least a year… since Margaret would be in Chile and Dave in Spain. I didn’t know then that I’d be in Portland, but it was looking more and more likely.
So it was a gift to be together again, not on the Eastern seaboard of course, and not everyone since Margaret is still in Chile. But along the Pacific on the left coast in LA LA Land. A sublimely surreal place on Earth, but what did we care. We were having the time of our lives, just being together and picking up right where we left off. And of course I could give you the play-by-play, but I don’t “kiss and tell”.
Red Sox Nation descended upon Seattle over Memorial Day weekend, and they didn’t just confine themselves to Safeco Field. Wherever we went we ran into Red Sox fans wearing their Jacoby Ellsbury, David Ortiz, and Manny Ramirez shirts. Ellsbury’s fans were considerably prolific which isn’t surprising since Seattle remains the closest ballfield to his hometown in Central Oregon. But it was a great weekend, sunny and warm enough… quite an amazing thing in Seattle in May.
Mom and I took the train up to Seattle on Monday for a night game against the Seattle Mariners. We checked into a swank historic hotel in downtown and had lunch near Pike Place Market before heading over to the new sculpture park. Later that afternoon we walked to the game and got swept up in the fact that Red Sox fans outnumbered the home team’s supporters. By the time it looked like the Sox were going to run away with the game, there were few Mariners fans in sight. Too bad for them since their team staged a late comeback attempt that was by far the most entertaining part of the evening… unless you were sitting near us and were entertained by the three drunk Canadians sitting in front of us.
Seattle’s Ichiro Suzuki, my late grandmother’s favorite player on the team, made the play of the game, which also made ESPN’s Top 10 plays of the day list at number one. It involved Ichiro slamming backwards into the outfield wall to make a nearly impossible catch. He thrilled us with his acrobatics and his amazing throw after the catch towards the infield. My grandmother would have been on cloud nine!
We finished our trip with a fun tour of Rem Koolhaas’ Seattle Public Library and Allied Works expansion of the Seattle Art Museum. Seattle isn’t Portland, but it’s a fun place to take in a Red Sox game. And fortunately I have tickets to the Sox’s next trip to Safeco Field in late July!!
traveling landscape historian and artist exploring place, spirit, history, and design
taking the long way 