What happened was that we didn't talk about kids again in a real way until months after our wedding, in May of 2010. I could devote an entire other blog to the planning and enjoyment thereof, but I'll compress it wayyyyy down and throw in a link to an Audio Wedding track from right before the ceremony, a link to some photos, and a video of my friend Hannah Vaughan singing and playing guitar during the ceremony!
The lead-up to the wedding was predictably intense - that we planned it to take place at my Dad's house in South Dartmouth, MA, with events in Newport the day before and the day after - well, there were some logistics to tend to. A great many! Lin and I tried, and I hope succeeded, to maintain perspective and remember often that the idea was to throw a great party for our friends and family, and share with them what we'd found in each other. Simple. Everyone seems to have had a pretty great time, and even if the toasts did go on for EVER, we were pretty happy with it all. :)
But there was a definite coming-down period afterwards. When you've put months of time and energy into something that occurs over 72 hours and then is done, there's a feeling afterwards, at once liberating but also little wistful of...what next?
What next?!?!?!?!?! is sort of how I felt. And if that sounds like a discontented person, I wasn't. I was, and still am, just so damned excited always, to see what comes next for me and Lin.
KIDS?
I went through a couple of weeks, if not months, convinced that I shouldn't be a parent, had no business being a parent. I am too selfish, I thought. I'm capricious, and get bored with things, and sometimes don't follow through well, or at all. None of these traits boded well. And we'd talked about taking six months and getting round-the-world plane tickets someday! All by our lonesomes, with nary a diaper in sight! We’d shared dreams of ditching the typically ambitious, driven, exhausting city life, and both getting jobs at bookstores or cafés! I grasped at the last, flailing tendrils of my youth - wanted to stay out all night, smoke a cigarette or 10, get so drunk I'd lose the whole next day! Then I took the equivalent of a very, very deep breath...
How could I not want to have a kid with this guy, I thought? I may be selfish, but am I also stupid? No, really, Lin’s going to be like the best Dad any kid could ever hope for. And stripped of all my youth-finale defenses, I decided that with the task in front of me I just might be pretty okay at it myself. It's sappy, almost lugubriously so, but what I started to think, and said to Lin, is that I really just wanted to share with a kid whatever magic it was that we'd found. And once I started thinking that we might both be pretty good at this whole baby-raising thing, I relaxed into the idea, and ultimately started to get real excited about it.
But wait..what?!!! We can't make a baby by ourselves?! What the hell to do???!!!
That's when a dear friend of ours said she'd have a baby for us. She wasn't kidding; she was serious. And sure, we'd all had a few drinks, but she'd thought about it and wanted us to know that she wanted to do it.
TBC...
Missing Suit! - This is a track from the awesome, hour-long Audio Heirloom our friend Evan Roberts produced and edited. This is about a 5 minute track, occuring immediately before the ceremony; Lin realized he'd forgotten his suit back in Newport, and hilarity ensues...or something. (May take a few seconds to start, pretty large .WAV file...)
Wedding Photos by Michael Galinsky
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