Two weeks ago, my best friend married his best girl. Married in Boston, but they came down to Florida for a post-wedding reception dinner. That was last weekend. I went up to Tampa.
And … contrary to everything I’ve ever known or thought I knew about myself … I cried like a frickin’ baby when he and his erstwhile girlfriend, now wife, re-enacted their wedding vows for the Florida contingent. Like a baby. And, believe me — and those of you who know me well know this is true — I NEVER cry. Not any more, at least. Not very often, at least. But for Brian … I cried.
Cried out of happiness. Out of something. I can’t lie and say that Oscar Wilde’s words weren’t ringing through my head — “A second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience.” Maybe it was that idea — of optimism — that was making me cry. Maybe it’s because the cynic in me was thinking for a moment … maybe I’ve got it all wrong — maybe love does exist. Maybe you can take a flier on somebody. Maybe you can fall in love and maybe it will stick. Maybe Wilde wasn’t being cynical when he wrote those words (though I rather think he was) — isn’t it possible he was applauding the nerve it takes to walk that aisle a second time? I can’t imagine doing that myself. Believing in someone that much again.
So, maybe. Maybe that’s why I was crying.
But I know one thing: I was also crying because I love him. He’s the best person I’ve known over the last 17 years. We met at Bucknell.
He taught me about philosophy, in fact, he’s taught me more things than I can remember … and I’d like to think I’ve taught him something as well. We’ve been friends ever since the first night we met at a poetry reading. Friends. The kind that people don’t believe can exist between a man and a woman … but which, most emphatically does exist. At least for us. We’ve lasted. (That’s Bri and me in the photo … a couple of years back at a New Year’s Eve party I threw.) Through my marriage and subsequent divorce. Through his first marriage, and now this beginning his second.
And I imagine we’ll continue to last until my dotage, at which point I fully expect him to support me and my book, cat, and martini habit for the rest of my years. Um, that might test our friendship … at long last. But only because he’s allergic. Not to cats, but to my relentless indulgence of their whims. (He’s already got a word for what he thinks ails me — anthropomorphimania.)
Maybe I cried because Brian has more faith in humans — more faith in love — than I do. (Yes, I admit, I reserve my faith for felines and birds, for the most part.) Maybe I cried because, underneath it all, I’m a big softie (though I doubt it) and I want to believe in people too. In love.
Maybe I just cried because wedding vows make people cry.
I don’t know. But I cried. And weirdly. Very weirdly … I was having fun at the same time.