Sat 5 Aug 2006
Weddings aren’t my favorite activity, but there have been three which I really liked: mine, one other, and today’s wedding of our neighbor, Elikam.
Getting ready for this wedding included a last-minute search for clothing through the maze of boxes in our house. Cathy wore the dress she found, but I never found my jacket, and as I put on my tie, I also noticed I had forgotten to shave. We finally began pulling out of the driveway with barely enough time to get there, and I began wondering if we’d be walking in behind the bride. Just then Cathy spotted our neighbor, the groom, pulling out of his driveway – and the pressure was off! Our neighbors are originally from Ghana, so we immediately knew the wedding would be on African time rather than American time. Now we were relaxed.
When we arrived we were surprised to discover how the relationships of our neighbors intersected with relationships in our own lives in ways we hadn’t realized before. I saw Ivan whom I had met in Baguio, Philippines, our neighbors who had emigrated from South Africa, and our Egyptian friends who are part of our school, Trace Academy. Some of the people there were ones we had only met since we returned from Hungary, but almost everyone there was someone we felt an affinity for. Only after we left did we figure out why; everyone there had lived outside their native culture for an extended period of time.
