Hold Back The Dawn

A Wedding, a Puppy, and Time

The wedding took place in Pereira, Colombia, and most if not all of the family were there to see one of us, a great-niece of mine, get married at an elegant old hacienda to a handsome, enterprising Colombian who was in turn surrounded by his distinguished family and friends. I was there to officiate, one of two, me speaking English, the groom’s uncle, Spanish.

What I said was heartfelt; I left out the obvious jokes because they seemed wrong, mean-spirited and out of place. If I thought about my own wedding—a comic elopement to Canada—I didn’t refer to it, the day wasn’t about me.

The Odyssey was in my head because I’d recently been shopping for a suit; something suitable for a wedding, blue perhaps, because blue seems like an optimistic color. As we age, or should I say that as I get older, I’ve become aware that the interior view I have of myself doesn’t necessarily agree with what others see. To my inner eye I’m still somewhere in my mid-to-late-thirties. I tend to dress that way, which isn’t always appropriate. I don’t know if it’s because I thought I looked my best at that age, or felt most at ease with myself; I wasn’t yet wearing glasses and still had my hair. Or at least most of it. Anyhow, as I shopped for a suit—an item of clothing I almost never wear—I tried to balance what I liked with what I could still get away with, trying to adjust my internal view to a more objective reality, flattered to discover that I needed the ‘athletic cut’, and that the pants had to be taken in for the suit in the perfect shade of blue to fit.

Thinking of my own long marriage, the long time I lived with Vivian Matalon, I know that even at the end, somewhere I still thought of him as he was when we first got together, could still see in him the man I met in the faraway New York of 1969. I know the same was true for him because in his final years, as he became more frail, he would protest whenever I did something that he felt violated that boy I used to be.

This led me, as noted, to the Odyssey, and the great recognition scene that brings the story to a close, a scene as powerful and splendid in its own way as the Achilles/Priam scene that crowns the Iliad. Here’s what I had to say:

Hold Back The Dawn

I wouldn’t presume to offer advice to two such sophisticated and accomplished young people as Kyla and Juan. I’m sure they have their own plans and expectations, ambitions and goals, and routes marked out to achieve them. They don’t need words of advice or homilies from me. Let me just say that, in due time I hope they achieve all their ambitions; or as many as are good for them and perhaps not in quite the way they’d expected. With luck, once achieved those goals will lead to others that as yet they can’t imagine. If I’m reluctant to offer advice, thinking of the future, a place where nothing is certain and predictions mostly turn out to be wrong, I’d like instead to offer a blessing.

The loveliest image of marriage I know is from the Odyssey, when the hero, having stepped out to pick up a carton of oat milk and maybe a bag of chips, disappears for twenty years, leaving his young wife with a newborn son. I’m skipping over some details. When, after much struggle and suffering he finally makes his way home, he finds his wife waiting, steadfast if somewhat impatient. Stuff happens and there’s a lot of unpleasantness but then at last they’re alone. Other guys have shown up, claiming to be her husband, so Penelope is understandably cautious. When she tries to trick him, Odysseus does not take it well—to be fair, he’s been through some things. But finally, finally, when they are sure of each other, shy to be alone after such a long time, both aware of how much they’ve changed, that their hair is now gray, that his face is scarred and battle hardened, her cheeks are lined with many tears, then—and here comes the blessing—the goddess who’s been watching his progress with a certain amount of amusement softened at times with pity, restores to them the bloom of youth and beauty they’d known when they were newly weds, before leading them upstairs to the marriage bed around which their house is built. And after she’s seen them safely tucked in, as they begin again to find each other, so that they will have time to make up at least a little for what has been lost over the years, to make the night last she holds back the dawn.

Both Kyla and Juan, and their parents, have striven to make this day, this occasion as perfect as possible. Looking around at all of us brought together here in this lovely place, I’d say they’ve done a pretty good job. Outstanding, in fact. But after all this is gone, and you move on together, all this tangible present gets handed over to memory, first cousin to imagination, big sister to dreams.

Time, as you’ll come to see as you live through more of it, is a fickle, unpredictable thing, stretching, spreading, and contracting. Memory is unreliable, we each invent our own past, photos and videos tell lies. I’m thinking of a time to come, when you’re my age, and when either or both of you come to be standing where I am now before two young people starting out together in some far-off unimaginable future. What you remember from today will most likely not be what you expect. We don’t remember triumphs so much as we nurse regrets. To speak from my own experience, from the various Broadway first nights I shared with the first Vivian—who isn’t here today—what I remember is a suit that didn’t fit; a particular light cue; him sitting hurriedly beside me as the houselights began to dim for the start of the second act saying ‘The Times is a rave’; the inevitable feeling of disappointment once the final curtain is down; smiles; a familiar face seen in an unfamiliar light, Vivian’s pride, my own admiration, and the happiness to be there with him. So I’m guessing you might remember a smile, a touch, the nervousness, the apprehension you perhaps saw in each other, Juan might remember Kyla’s dress—it was white—and you’ll carry forward other impressions just as fleeting and seemingly inconsequential; what someone said, a look that passes between your parents, the longing to be alone. Discarding the rest, memory will winnow and refine reality into the narrative of today you’ll carry forward, what’s most essential, what it was you found in each other.

Time can be cruel, but it can also be kind, as I’m discovering; if it takes away, it can also add much; while you might regret the speed with which it passes you can also welcome its changes. I wish for you the good fortune that a long time together can bring, that you’ll be among the favored who live to be bored with each other, impatient sometimes, who feel constrained and sometimes even trapped, and who are then overwhelmed by a sudden familiar glance that pierces the heart with pity, with kindness, that overwhelms with love. Your lives together will open you to worlds undreamed of; my own long marriage with Vivian taught me much about who I am and gave to me his family.

Like the characters in the ancient poem, may you find passion tempered by experience, and despite any outward changes may you always see in each other who you see today. And so far as you’re concerned, may the goddess always hold back the dawn.

Without getting too pompous I wanted to offer something poised between their past together—because they didn’t arrive as strangers—and their officially joined future that now lay ahead. I’m not one of those who make light of marriage, I had to wait too long for it. In all its many forms and variants it’s been a central organizing unit in all kinds of civilizations. Not that I’ve officiated before but I have been a guest, and I’ve enjoyed the feeling of welcoming another couple to the fold, as it were. But in Colombia, with K and J, for the first time I became aware that I was now handing on, that my time in the sun was done, and that the future was with them, and whatever that future turns out to be it’ll be up to them to mess it up in their own particular way.

Which is not to say that I’m calling for the bill and checking out, not quite yet, but I no longer have that smooth vista stretching before me, whatever view I now enjoy has a rather forced perspective, two-dimensional, easy to knock down and pack up.

And so the puppy. She became a thing while we were still in Colombia, the morning after the wedding, as a group of us sat together over breakfast, when a couple of pictures sent by a friend popped up on my phone. Not thinking much of it I asked if anyone wanted a puppy and passed them around. It turned out that my niece did, the mother of the bride, and since she was staying on it was arranged that I would pick up the puppy and bring her on once they got home and were settled. Which is where we are now; she’s in my lap as I type; another dog in my lap as I type, but not mine this time.

As charming and pretty as she is I’ve been reassured to discover that there is not one part of me that hankers after another dog. And also I’m glad to note that it doesn’t come as a surprise, that I truly have moved on and no longer need that responsibility. But also—she really is very tiny still, a Shih Tzu/Cavalier King Charles mix—for the first time I’m conscious that the chances are good she’ll outlive me. And that’s come as an interesting sidebar to this experience, this whole shopping/Colombia/wedding/family/homecoming/puppy experience. It doesn’t obsess or depress me, it’s just there to be mostly ignored except for sometimes as I look at her.

But isn’t that what a wedding is? In the traditional sense? When those of us who are older come together to hand on the future to a new generation? Locking them together as we stand aside. If most of the old symbols and rituals have turned threadbare, that reality remains: it’s their world now.

This is my favorite picture from that day (photo Erick Guzman): the bride sits on the rim of an old bathtub, its utility gone, as she waits for her father to walk her down that ritual pathway to meet her groom, the benedick, the blessed. She’s all dressed and ready, everything that could be done has been done, every contingency planned for—there was one unplanned delay when it was discovered that the groom and one of his wedding party were wearing each other’s clothes, suits that didn’t begin to fit that they’d each put on out of nerves—and so she waits, ready for what comes next, ready for a future where I won’t belong, but where perhaps she’ll continue to use some of the good-quality bakeware I gave them as a present, my own small bid to become part of their future—which is what wedding presents are, another way to say ‘I was there, Remember me? I was wearing that suit. It was blue. And I said…’