champagne is overrated

Normally I don't indulge my pinterest side but I am logged onto the website and viewing instructions on assembling turkey oreos and I am wondering who has time for this. I keep browsing because like all women I am enamored by the glitter and razzle-dazzle and the darn prettiness of the thing. I remind you that there are no lace curtains in my household or flowery wallpaper although I have admired these things in other women's homes.

I am in Florida to see Sarah get married and her wedding could have been pulled right from that website and I mean that as a serious compliment.

My brother's children are friendly and generous with their time to the elders of the family and that's admirable considering how rarely we say anything interesting. My brother, Sarah's father and I have had our disagreements. There is a scar on his left temple just past the hair line. I hit him hard with a metal ice cube tray back in the 60's and the tray was full of rock-like ice and I'm pretty sure I had a good reason at the time.

We were more violent back then. Monkey bars were embedded in cement slabs and every day our young brains were bombarded with sugar overload from drinking large quantities of Kool-aid and then there were all those Three Stooges episodes we watched.

All things forgiven I still get an invite to the wedding. It is an elegant affair and we are sitting next to a small body of water shaded by trees with swans and a fountain. It is crazy beautiful. No alcohol will be served so we don't have to worry about some one's crazy aunt falling off a chair like the last time. And I am kidding.

The bride is shimmering, literally shimmering in all that lace and her coal black hair is pulled back in a simple chiffon with what I'm guessing are lilies. I don't know these tropical blooms and the Ecuadorian pink roses are everywhere.

I watch my brother walk this gorgeous woman down the aisle and his face struggles with the volume of emotion swelling within and he seems surprised by the enormity of it.  I look for the half-circle scar from the ice tray that his receding hairline should have laid bare and I fail to see it. Like so many useless and perturbing memories it's gone, good riddance.
I raise a glass to this lovely place and company and I would swear this stuff is champagne.