Showers and Ceremonies

My youngest neice, Heather, marries her boyfriend, Chris, this coming Saturday.

To this point, I’ve watched the event from afar. Mother called three weeks ago to chat about one of Heather’s multiple wedding showers. “Seventy people there,” Mother said. “Took two hours just to open all the gifts.”

Mother’s tone shifted as she drifted off into memories. “Wasn’t like that when Mac and I got married. We didn’t get showers. We barely had the clothes on our backs.” She sighs. “I can’t imagine having all those things just starting out.”

Frankly? Neither can I. When Clyde and I met, I had some decent home electronics, some bad grad school furniture, and a hodge-podge of mis-matched dishes lifted from my Mother’s kitchen when I left home for my senior year of college. Clyde, who had been on his own longer, had a small house full of furniture, closets full of various collectible items (from Hummel figurines to Mickey Mouse memorabilia), and the basic kitchen counter appliances.

We dated six months, then merged our lives without so much as a dinner party. No friends showered us with gifts. No family arrived on the doorstep with six place settings of our china pattern. No one threw us a “pounding” — a bizarre Amish custom, popular in the South, where everyone gives the bride and groom a pound of sugar, flower, etc. Instead, we were apart … and then we were together.

* * * * *

Our lives outside the realm of heterosexual custom give me a unique perspective on wedding traditions, most of which strike me as bizarre. Take the business of registration: young couples going from store to store, pointing laser guns at the UPC codes of everything that strikes their fancy, from stylish wastebaskets at Target to silver candlesticks at Dillards. (Thanks to the Internet, I was able to browse Heather and Chris’ selections online, and ship their booty with a single click.)

The practice of registration — the audacity of selecting thousands of dollars’ worth of merchandise so others will have an easier time buying my gifts — stuns me. I suppose it makes it less likely that the newlyweds will receive four West Bend electric juicers … but still!

Don’t get me wrong: I’m glad to see Heather and Chris getting married, and happy to see their union recognized and celebrated by family and friends in a way mine never will be. I’m glad they’ll start life with eight matching place settings of bone china and eight full place settings of Mikasa daily dinnerware and eight matching ice tea flutes and two different styles of coffee mugs and every piece of Calphalon bakeware sold by Target. I want good things for them.

And I’m neither bitter nor jealous. I don’t want a shower or a pounding. Clyde and I don’t need more stuff — our house is bursting at the seams as it is. In fact, what I do crave doesn’t come with a UPC code. You can’t buy it at Target or Dillards. It cannot be registered.

* * * * *

I am on the phone with my sister-in-law, Suzanne. She is unique in all my family, in that she never fails to ask about Clyde. After much talk of wedding plans for her daughter, she asks what sort of trip Clyde and I have scheduled next.

“Our tenth anniversary is coming up,” I say. “We’re headed to Austrailia to celebrate.”

“Ten years,” Suzanne muses. The time must shock her, because she says it over and over again. “Ten years. Ten years.”

Later, on the phone with mother, I mention the upcoming tenth anniversary.

We’ve made some progress — she no longer responds to this kind of talk by saying, “Anniversary of what?” Now, she just changes the subject. “What do you think of that war in Iraq?” she asks. “You think they’ll find those weapons of mass destruction?”

I do not want another toaster. I do not want a microwave. I do not want eight place settings of Mikasa Palatial Platinum. I do not want the chafing dishes in the Lenox China Butler’s Pantry pattern. I do not want Oneida Easton flatware. I do not want a 15-inch Cephalon bakeware pizza pan from Target.

But a simple, “Congratulations on your ten years together” — especially from my own family, from the people who are closest to me — would mean a lot.

Where do I go to register that?