The whole reason for going to Georgia this past week, as I've said, was for a celebration of my parents' 50th wedding anniversary. My sisters, no. 1 and no. 2 have been working hard for the past several months to make everything perfect. Sister no. 6 and I have done quite a bit too, just not so much. We functioned more as grunts than anything else.
My biggest job was to create a slide show of pictures from over the past 5+ decades. If you're extraordinarily bored you can see the silent beta version on YouTube. I think the final version turned out pretty well. At least I got positive feedback. No. 1 was in charge of the cake, invitations, and decorations. The room was gorgeous. As was the cake (a slight lean aside). No 2. (an extreme foodie and inveterate drama queen) did the rest of the food. She was prepared for about a small bazillion people. And all the copious food was delicious, even if we weren't able to eat half of it. Sister no. 6 helped everything run like clockwork (even if she and I preferred to stay mostly in the background). Our brother, no. 3 came as a guest rather than helping or even paying his share of the costs (He has some kind of juvenile sibling rivalry thing going on).
Quite a few people showed up. So many that the building's air conditioning was strained to battle the Georgia heat. We held the event at the church where my parents were married, in the same "fellowship hall" where they had their wedding reception.
It was a little bit like being haunted by the ghosts of my childhood. Most of the people there knew me by my childhood nickname, so I ended up responding to anything people called me, including my brother's name. Many of the attendees looked vaguely familiar, older versions of people I used to know well. I had to fight the defensive mode some of those familiar faces put me in. I don't know how much those people know about me these days, so I found myself playing the pronoun and dodge the question with vagueness games. "Oh yes, I do live in Spain... I just... love it there."
A few rare exemptions included my siblings and in-laws. I knew they knew I was gay, so I could be myself. It was nice hanging out with no. 2's husband. He's a nice, fairly open minded guy (and a hell of a better person than her ex). We spent a good bit of time in the kitchen getting food ready, bantering with innuendos that often left visitors to the kitchen bewildered. "How do you take your fruit?" "I usually give him a back massage first."
Also there was a minister who has performed the weddings of several members of my family and now presides over a church in Atlanta where many LGBT folks worship. He has talked to my mom about me. He pulled me aside at one point and we talked about how great my parents have been. It's easy to forget in all that closeted hell I went through when I was younger that when I did finally come out, my parents were spectacular. They're pretty much rural southerners with some backwards ideas about things like race, gender, and sexuality. It's just how they were raised. But when I came out, they decided to be supportive rather than losing me. Frankly I was amazed at the time. As I told the preacher, I fully expected to never see my family again. But instead they were accepting and told the rest of the family that if they couldn't be nice, they were welcome to stay away. I don't know if my parents know how much that meant to me. I truly feel lucky for that.
Anyway, I think the whole thing went off very well. As I think I've said before, I've never seen my somewhat antisocial father talk to so many people. And my mom was her eternal social butterfly self and seemed to enjoy the attention. I hope they enjoyed it.
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