My Sister's Wedding

by Stefan Sharkansky

Friday, August 23, 2002

I fly today to Boston for my sister E.'s wedding. There are many potential crises waiting to happen, though fortunately none to the bride and groom. Joining me are my 10-month-old son David and my wife Irene, who is suffering from severe nursing pain and chronic sleep-deprivation from trying to wean David while also working as a senior associate in a major law firm. Nevertheless, it would be an exaggeration to say that she's on the verge of a nervous breakdown and about to become addicted to pain-killers. Many other family members are converging on Boston for the festivities, including my mother from Wisconsin, and my father and step-mother from Israel with their teenage children. I haven't seen my step-mother Varda, my 19-year-old half-sister Tamar, or my 18-year-old half-brother Mattan since my own wedding three years ago. Tamar is now serving her compulsory duty in the Israeli army. Mattan will be drafted later in the fall. Naturally, we are concerned about them and are interested in their experiences and thoughts on the war they're living in. This is also only the second time that my mother has met my father's second family. The first time was at my wedding. My parents aren't likely to meet again until one of their mutual descendants has a wedding, Bar-Mitzvah or a funeral, so hopefully not for another 12 years or so. In the meantime, E. and I are hoping this encounter will be more relaxed and congenial than the last one was. Then there is the matter of Irene's 10-year-old daughter Olivia, who has been in Cincinnati with her father all summer. She has spent all of her other school years with us in San Francisco. She is joining us for the wedding, but is supposed to spend the coming school year in Cincinnati. Last spring when we first raised this idea with her she was violently opposed, and I do mean violently. We think she has changed her mind over the summer, and that she now embraces the plan, but we're not entirely sure yet.

We leave the house at 5:30am for the 7 o'clock flight out of SFO. As soon as we get to the check-in counter Irene turns to me.
"Did you remember to grab the bottle of formula out of the refrigerator?"
"No, did you?"
"No. But you did pack an extra bottle in the diaper bag, didn't you?"
No, because why pack an empty bottle when you already have a full one? and besides, "empty bottle" was deliberately omitted from the exhaustive inventory of the diaper bag that I recited for you last night. And it's no big deal, because we do have 3 cans of formula, which he can drink out of a regular cup.
"This is going to be interesting", she says.

In the security line we are selected for a random inspection. They made me take my shoes off, and they inspected them very carefully. Because a Jewish American software developer who's travelling with his Ivy-League-educated Korean-American corporate attorney wife and their infant son matches the exact demographic profile of those who are most likely to put explosives in their shoes and blow up an airplane.

This is my first trip with the baby, though Irene has flown with him before. I used to be the passenger who always muttered "oh, great" whenever I was seated within three rows of a mewling infant. But now it's my precious David we're talking about and if anybody has a problem being on his airplane, then they can sit out on the wing. He starts to fuss as soon as we're seated.
"Maybe you could give him some of your Vicodin, so he'll fall asleep", I say.
"Or I could give some to everyone else on the plane", she says, and capitulates to nurse him and grimaces, because she will soon be in unbearable pain. She decides to call E. to ask her to get a bottle and have it ready when we arrive, but the minute I hand her my cellphone, the flight attendant announces that it's time to turn off all electronic equipment.

During the flight I have to actively restrain David as he tries to climb over the seatback in front of me in order to play with the hair of the sleeping lady in the next row. Irene tries to call E. using the zillion-dollar-a-minute seat-back skyphone, but it is stuck in its cradle. The flight attendant comes over and has to dig out the phone with a plastic fork and knife.

David sticks his hand into my drinking water, which now tastes like the clean diaper that he was playing with earlier.

A flight attendant runs through the aisles screaming that there is a medical emergency in the front of the cabin, and asking if anybody on board is "a physician, a medical physician". As opposed to, say, a culinary or automotive physician. Fortunately, there were two E.R. doctors, a surgeon and a licensed physician's assistant on board, so we don't have to make an emergency landing.

I almost never fall asleep on airplanes, but this time I bring an inflatable neck pillow and a PeeperSleepers sleeping mask. I actually do fall asleep this time, only to be woken up seconds later by Irene, who has urgent news. "John McEnroe has six kids," she informs me. "Three with Tatum O'Neal and three with his current wife. I read about it in Vanity Fair". I am so excited by this report that I can't fall back to sleep for the rest of the flight.

During the movie David climbs up on my seatback and flaps his arms and giggles at the lady sitting behind me. "Could you please take your baby down", she says. "I'm trying to watch the movie".

After we land we pick up the rental car and at the exact moment that we're about to pull out of the parking lot, Irene realizes that she left her purse on board the plane with all of her cash, credit cards and ID. The first, second or third time that your wife loses a valuable and important item you will be sympathetic and supportive. "Oh dear, honey. Let's go back and look for it!" The 70 or 80th time that this happens you will make an appointment for her to have a complete neurological examination. But the 30 or 40th time that your wife loses something like a purse! keys! sunglasses! gloves! cash! sunglasses! passport! windbreaker! sunglasses! sunglasses! pants! you say absolutely nothing, you let her deal with the crisis herself, you do not get involved in any way. This is for your own safety, to ensure that you do not go off somewhere and shoot yourself in the head again. Irene calls the airline from the car to ask about her purse and just after she finally gets to someone who might be able to help her we go into the tunnel and she gets cut off and has to start all over again. Somebody eventually promises to call her if they ever find it.

My mother and Olivia greet us at our hotel. It's been only two months since we last saw Olivia but she seems to have grown several inches and is already larger than her mother. She is very excited about seeing her baby brother, but when he fails to respond to her in the way that she imagined he is supposed to, she convinces herself that he doesn't like her and she breaks down in tears.

After dinner my mother and I go to the Aufruf prayer service, which traditionally is when the groom reads from the Torah on the Saturday morning before the wedding. In modern, or Progressive, Judaism, anything goes. This Aufruf is for both the bride and the groom, it is on a Friday evening and there is no Torah reading. But what's important is for the congregation to celebrate the couple that is about to get married. The Aufruf is held at a temple in Brookline, right near the JFK Birthplace Home and the Shalom Hunan Kosher Chinese restaurant. When we walk into the temple I see Varda, Mattan and Tamar, and my mother disappears. Mattan is now slightly taller than I am and as skinny as I was when I was 18. Tamar is more cheerful and has nicer hair than when I last saw her and has exchanged her nose piercing for at least three tattoos. She is also the first Sharkansky to smoke cigarettes since our Grandma kicked her 50-year habit back in 1976.

Varda is weary of the "Matzav" or "Situation" as Israelis call the current conflict. It seems to be affecting the children. Tamar apparently found it remarkable that nobody in the Boston shopping mall searched their bags at the entrance. Mattan heard an ambulance siren and wondered aloud if there had been a terror attack. "It's not normal for people to live this way" Varda says. She's been through worse, she was born in Jerusalem during the British Mandate, and was a toddler during the siege of Jerusalem in the War of Independence. Now she says "If anything happens to me or your father it's not that big of a deal. We've already lived our lives, but if anything were to happen to the kids that would be a real tragedy"

The format of the service is progressive, we sit in a circle, someone plays guitar. The prayers are mostly traditional, in Hebrew, with familiar melodies. It's a very nice service, and the informal congregation or chavurah are very nice people. E. had asked our father to prepare a talk and to lead a discussion about some Jewish topic. He is a professor of political science so she specifically asked him to talk about something that didn't have anything to do with politics. He opened his talk by saying that this is impossible, that the Jews are and always have been a political people and his topic is Politics in the Bible. Many of the stories in the Old Testament are about the political struggles of the Jewish community, as a relatively small and weak people trying to maintain its communal existence at the mercy of the larger and more powerful empires of the day, which always put limits on what the Jewish state could do. In the context of the current situation, he says, the empire is the United States. Israel has managed to build a prosperous and successful state because the Jews have learned historically how to survive as a weak party dependent on a stronger party. The Palestinians, meanwhile, have accompished nothing, yet act like victors and demand concessions from the rubble because they've never learned how to function as a successful minority.

At the end of the talk somebody hands out candy which we throw at E. and L.. During the schmoozing period after the service I catch up with Mattan. (Did you know that schmooze is originally a Hebrew word? It comes from the Yiddish pronunciation shmu'os of the Hebrew word shmu'ot which means rumors). Mattan is on vacation until his draft date, which is November 26. He's finished with all of his high school graduation exams, except for the Israeli equivalent of the SAT which he takes in September. He is on a track to become an officer in the communications corps.
"They tell you that the communications is like the veins and arteries of the army," he said and that "it's the best and most interesting job you can have. But they all tell you the same thing, even if they want you to become a truck driver."
I ask Mattan about his girlfriend and he says that they broke up over the summer "She was complaining that I was spending too much time studying for exams and not enough time with her."
"Well now that you're done with your exams you can spend more time with her." I say.
"I'll have other girlfriends," he shrugs.

E. brought a bottle and sippy cup for David which I take back to the hotel to a relieved Irene. David won't go to sleep, partly I suppose because of the 3 hour time difference and partly because of the unfamiliar crib.

The Rehearsal Lunch

On Saturday we have a 1:00 rehearsal lunch at the home of L.'s sister Molly Jane. All the various parents, brothers, sisters, children on both sides are there. L.'s sister, brothers, in-laws, and their children are all extremely warm and engaging. The catered lunch of Chinese food arrives at the same time that we do. E. is a vegetarian, and L. is a vegan, which means that he avoids not only meat, but also anything that ever came out of an animal, such as eggs or dairy products. "The lunch is from Grasshopper," L. says "it's one of the best restaurants in the city", meaning one of the best vegan restaurants in the city. Someone is also carrying in what appears to be cheesecakes. But I am already suspicious that these are non-dairy ersatz cheesecakes.

Now, I should stop to say that the rehearsal lunch is all about L. and E. on their special occasion and it's their privilege to serve whatever food makes them happy. I wouldn't dream of making fun of my sister's tastes and preferences for celebrating her own wedding. Nevertheless, I am an omnivore, as are most people on both sides of the family. And there is something inherently funny about a wedding rehearsal meal where the bride and groom serve food that many of their guests would rather not eat, but where all of the guests have to eat with a smile anyway and try to say something nice about the food. Since I'm not going to make fun of L. and E. and their choice of food, I will instead make fun of the way that the rest of us react to it.

We all line up in Molly Jane's kitchen where lunch is served. It looks like ordinary Chinese food, except that the sweet and sour pork has tofu where the pork is supposed to go and there are little pieces of beige and brown meat substitutes in lieu of chicken and beef. The brown stuff is not soy product, but something called seitan, which L. explains is made from wheat gluten. The name seitan reminds Irene of Satan and for me it evokes Soylent Green. I didn't get to have breakfast this morning, I am hungry. When I get hungry my blood sugar drops, causing rapidly accelerating impatience and irritability, especially when I encounter hindrances on my path to proper food. Now I have nothing against tofu or seitan. I just don't want to eat them. I tried tofu once, reluctantly, back in 1981 when I lived in a co-op house in college. I hated it then, and I've refused to eat it ever since. The closest I will get to tofu is miso soup, which I like. But even then I always drink out all the broth and leave the tofu lumps shivering in the bottom of the cup. This is the first time I have ever even heard of seitan. For all I know it could be perfectly tasty, yet I have no desire to even try it. Why? Am I simply prejudiced against artificial meat? or do I feel instintively protective toward meat, which is fighting for its life in this sanctuary of cow and fish hugging, and therefore am I morally outraged by this imposter? In any event, I help myself to a large shovel full of rice, the sweet and sour tofu without any tofu and some of the mushrooms and asparagus. I don't take any of the fake meat.

Over lunch Olivia confides to Tamar that she has a boyfriend in Cincinnati, so I guess this settles the issue of her staying there for fifth grade. L.'s brother George and my father hit it off famously, since George teaches political science, and in my father's world there is no higher calling. We eat politely. Irene tries a piece of seitan and chews it for a while before giving up and discreetly disposing of it somewhere. One of my Israeli relatives eats everything on her plate except for an enormous indiscreet mound of counterfeit meat. I fill my belly with fistfulls of rice and glasses of ginger ale. But this is not quite enough, I crave for cheesecake, even though I have doubts about its authenticity. The cheesecake, we're told, will be served after the wedding rehearsal.

I plan to take Irene,Olivia and my mother to the mall after the rehearsal in order to pick up my tuxedo and buy shoes for Olivia. But when E. hears that I haven't picked up my tuxedo yet she says "then you better go RIGHT NOW just in case there's a problem with it and you have to get another one someplace else". But this would mean missing the cheesecake, on the off chance that it's a real one, not to mention having to make an extra trip to the mall. So I call the tux place and they assure me that they're open for another 6 hours, and they have my suit waiting for me, so there's no rush. E. is not completely satisfied with this answer but she lets me back into the rehearsal so I can practice my part. As a groomsman, my role in the ceremony is minimal. Mattan and I are to walk down the aisle together and stand behind the chupah. After the service, Irene, who is a bridesmaid, and I will march out together in the recessional.

We finish the rehearsal and someone wheels out the dessert, which looks like a plausible cheesecake and has a nice layer of cherries on top. I take a cautious bite. It's not bad and I'm not sure whether it's real or not, my doubts grow when I notice the waxy texture of the outer regions, but it's tasty enough so I keep eating. Irene and I are halfway through, happily eating away when E. prematurely spills the beans by coming up to us and asking "how do you like the cheesecake?" while wearing a very unpokerlike smirk.
"Good", I say.
E. smiles wider and L. proudly announces that it's 100% non-dairy, soy-based and called "I Can't Believe It's Not Cheesecake".
"It's good," Irene says.
And we both leave the half-eaten portions of the cheesecake-style non-dairy dessert product on our plates and head off to the mall with Olivia and my mother.

That evening we have dinner with my father and his family and with my grandmother's sister Eleanor and her son Bob. Ellie is a good 84 years old and relies on a walker, but her mind is sharper than mine will be when I'm half her age. Her father lived to be 94, her maternal grandparents made it to 95 and 96, her aunt Lillian died three years ago at age 100. Ellie will outlive us all. She orders a grilled cheese sandwich from the kid's menu along with Olivia. I need to cleanse my system so I order the biggest steak in the house.

Irene sends me out in the rain to get formula for David. It's 11:01pm when I get back, but the hotel's clock radio says 1:01am. Irene makes fun of the hotel: "Idiots, they can't even set their own clock". (It is particularly puzzling that the clock is set exactly 2 hours ahead of local time. If it were set to 1 hour ahead I could believe that an earlier guest from, say, Nova Scotia wanted to have his room clock set to his home time. But 2 hours ahead is the middle of the Atlantic ocean and as far as I can tell the only inhabited land that belongs to this time zone is the Brazilian island of Fernando de Noronha). The wedding starts at 11 the next morning. E. told us that we all need to show up at the temple "no later than 8:45" for the photographers who are starting at 9. Irene has to get her hair done at 7:30 before the photo shoot. This means that I need to wake up at 7:00 in order to get ready and Irene has to get up at 6:00. But before we go to sleep we experiment with some clever unauthorized uses for the PeeperSleepers sleeping mask. I go to sleep still wearing the mask, Irene stays up trying to put to sleep the baby who is still on Pacific time.

I wake up with a start to a very loud broadcast of the BBC world service, coming from the clock radio which reads 3:01am, Fernando de Noronha time, or 1:01am where I used to be asleep. I am the sort of person who usually takes a long time to fall asleep, and once awakened it usually takes me even longer to go back to sleep. I toss and turn for hours, and probably fall asleep at some point, but then its 8:06 on Fernando de Noronha when the phone rings with Irene's wake-up call. And I have to get up too to help take care of David while Irene gets ready, so I start the big day on essentially zero sleep.

The Wedding

It's my job to get David, Olivia and my mother over to the temple by 8:45, not to mention that I have to shower, eat and put on my own tuxedo beforehand. I leave David with my mother and take Olivia down to the hotel restaurant for breakfast. She insists on wearing her lilac junior bridesmaid dress to eat in, which is a massive food spill waiting to happen. But far be it from me to come between a 10 year old girl and a fancy dress. In the elevator she says. "Mommy's wrong. She said you'd be pissed off today because your sister's getting married". [Irene later clarified that what she actually told Olivia was to be on her best behavior today, because I'd be stressed out because of all the things we need to do for the wedding].

Olivia keeps her dress clean by eating almost none of the breakfast that I paid good money for, and we make it to the temple at 9:20, which is as punctual as one can be when one has to manage a mother, an infant and a 10-year-old clothes-horse. I'm expecting to see a crowd of relatives led by E. glowering at us for holding everybody up, instead I find that everybody's standing around with nothing to do because E. and L. haven't arrived yet. They eventually show up. E. looks radiant. L. has been freaking out all morning because he discovered when he was putting on his tuxedo that the trousers were way too short. Simultaneously, my father found that his trousers were way too long. It turns out that the tuxedo store engineered a three-way mix-up involving L., my father, and L.'s brother David. I find the three of them in the temple men's room wearing the upper halves of their tuxedos and playing musical pants.

The photographers are a married couple, an Israeli woman and her American husband. They alternate taking pictures and sniping at each other. The woman gives her instructions in a weird mixture of Hebrew and English that only a few of us completely understand: 'Tistaklu at me. Everybody lekhayekh'. My mother is unhappy that so many of the pictures of E. include my father's second family. "I want at least one picture without any of the extra people", she tells the photographer. Tamar and Mattan shrink an inch and a half each and step aside in silence.

Some of us watch the signing of the ketubah in the conference room and then it's time for the actual ceremony in the sanctuary. The party lines up and we march down the aisle in turn. Mattan and I stand behind the chupah. Olivia, who has more stage presence than any living movie star, prances down the aisle and steals the show from the bride as she does at every wedding she appears in. I always cry at weddings and the sight of my sister walking down the aisle with our parents brings me to the edge, so I bite hard on my lip to try to hold it in. Jewish wedding ceremonies are usually short, and this one thankfully is no exception. The rabbi utters a few incantations, L. and E. walk in circles around each other until I get dizzy, they exchange rings, seven different people each read one of the seven blessings, L. steps on the glass, and we march back down the aisle while L.'s nephew Josh sings a stunning rendition of Lekhi Lakh. My little sister is now a married lady.

At the reception I see various relatives that I haven't seen in ages. I learn that little David may soon his lose his place as the only Sharkansky of his generation, since my second-cousin Ed is expecting his first child in January, and Ed's brother Jim is getting married in October. My mother's cousin Edie is there "You look great," I tell her. "Don't sound so surprised," she says. I am surprised only because she just turned 80 but doesn't look a day over 60. Edie came to the wedding with her late husband's cousin Al and Al's wife Esther, who is also my first-cousin twice-removed on my father's side, being the daughter of my great-great-aunt Lillian, the one who lived to be a hundred. So what this means is that I'm related to myself by marriage.

We give our toasts. L.'s brother George tells a tale of the three brothers sailing as young boys in a two-person boat, and how L. the youngest would always be made to lie on his belly on the deck and stick his head out over the bow as the "lookout". "For me," George said, "summer always meant the sound of L. giggling". My father told of E.'s birth, and how he drove my mother over some bumpy railroad tracks to induce labor so that E. would be born on time and minimize disruption to his career. He closed by exhorting E. and L. to give him some more granchildren.

For my toast, I recounted various moments from our life together, such as an incident which E. claims never happened, but I know was true, which is the time when we were children and she hit me over the head very hard with a wooden hammer. I explained that now that we're grown ups, we're very close and we don't fight anymore. And Because she is a licensed psychologist I always turn to her when I have a personal issue where I need free advice. And I confided in E. four-and-a-half years ago when I was contemplating asking Irene to marry me, and E. wheedled and cajoled me into proposing, and now I'm grateful that she did and I'm grateful that Irene said yes, because as Irene is always reminding me, our wedding day was the happiest day of my life. And I talked about E. and L. and how glad I was that they got together, but that their relationship, like all successful relationships, was not without conflict and they went through a long and arduous trial separation which lasted all of, what, four hours? Eight, E. corrected me. And it only went uphill from there and then everybody was expecting L. to propose, and he didn't and it was dragging on and on and starting to get ridiculous, and we were wondering what he was waiting for. And it turned out that he was only waiting to meet me and my family just to make sure he wasn't making a mistake and we met in the spring and passed each other's tests. And he proposed to E. a short time later. And it would be trite to say that if you look up the word mensch in the dictionary, you see L.'s picture, but he really is that kind of a mensch. And I closed by saying how happy I was to meet L.'s family this weekend and to see how nice they all were and how much love they had in that family and how happy I was to know that E. was marrying into such a wonderful family. Mazal Tov. And then there is dancing and eating and a little bit of drinking, but only a little bit, because most of the people there are Jews. The first dance is Have I Told You Lately That I Love You by Van Morrison. The best dancer of the whole party is my first-cousin twice-removed Esther, the one whose mother lived to be 100. Esther looks like she's in her 50s and dances like she's in her 20s, but according to the family tree she is 78.

Irene, David and I are seated at the table with E., L., my mother and her relatives. The food is excellent, vegetarian food so good, with various tasty salads and pastas, that it doesn't make you crave meat, but for those of us who are obsessed with devouring other creatures, there is a nice grilled salmon. E. and L. don't seem to get to eat much as they spend most of the meal circulating among the guests. My mother's cousin Milton is at our table, he looks exactly like I remember my late grandfather, his uncle. My Aunt Lynne and Uncle Ron sit next to us, and when I tell them that I'll be writing a diary of the weekend to post on my website, Aunt Lynne asks me to mention her, even if it's only to say that she asked me to mention her.

The party winds down, the friends and relatives disperse. E. makes a point of introducing me to her and L.'s friend Mark, whom they say is my long-lost twin. Several people say that he looks just like me and that we have identical mannerisms, but I meet him and detect absolutely no resemblance whatsoever. The Jerusalem Sharkanskys are driving up to Maine for a short vacation. Tamar has to go back to the army in a few days. E. starts to cry when she hugs Mattan, seeing him for the last time before he goes into the army. I start to cry when I see E. cry. It's no big deal, Mattan shrugs, it's just the army.

My mother, David and I go over to L. and E.'s house and hang out with them while they open presents. Irene brings Olivia to the airport to put her on the plane to Cincinnati. She starts fifth grade the next day. Irene meets us back at E. and L.'s house a few hours later. She tells a harrowing story of how they almost doesn't let Olivia on the plane because she's an unaccompanied minor, and this requires an extra $40 fee that you don't pay when you buy the ticket, only when you board, and Irene can't pay this because she left her entire wallet with all of her cash and credit cards on the plane. She calls the credit card people and gets them to uncancel one of her cancelled cards and uses that to pay for Olivia, but she can't walk Olivia all the way to the gate like she usually does because she doesn't have a photo ID. After delivering Olivia into the care of the airline, Irene goes to the lost and found and gets her purse back after all, and everything is still there except for the cash. On the drive back to the hotel from E.'s we get a call from the airline telling us that they still haven't found Irene's purse.

The Trip Home

When Irene and I travel together I'm the one who always wants to have the suitcases packed the night before we leave, so that we have as few issues to worry about on travel day. Irene always insists on doing everything at the last possible minute. Packing out of a hotel stay always takes a long time in our family, because as soon as we get to a new hotel room, Irene takes every item out of the suitcases and scatters them around the room, putting at least one item in every drawer, stuffing things under the beds and throwing random objects behind the television cabinet. I try to pack after we get home from E.'s, but we're both too tired, so this gets left until morning. My mother wants us to drive her to E.'s on our way to the airport, which we agree to do, because it's against every norm of social behavior to refuse your mother' request for a ride, even when her destination is dozens of miles out of your way and you have a plane to catch. The punchline is that because we (a) spend several extra hours packing and (b) get lost on the way to E.'s, we arrive at the check-in counter exactly 29 minutes before the flight, missing the 30 minute cut-off and losing our seats. The next flight is in 4 hours. "Fuck me," Irene says. "Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me." I feel like standing up to the man and insisting that they let us on our flight, but 2002 is just not the year to threaten physical violence against small-minded, sphincter-retentive, rule-worshipping idiots in airports, so we miss the flight and have to wait four hours for the next one. We are on the same flight with L.'s cousin Bruce who was at the wedding and happens to live in our neighborhood. He is randomly selected for a special security screening along with certain other passengers, because 57-year-old Jewish CFOs and middle-aged Japanese businessmen are just as likely to put explosives in their shoes as I am.

Epilogue

We arrive home safely without incident. We had a coupon for the parking lot so at least it's free. E. and L. drive off to a honeymoon in Maine, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, and also to a life of eternal wedded bliss. At least they now have all the kitchen implements they could ever hope for. Olivia starts fifth grade and doesn't mind going to a new school now that she has friends there. Tamar is back on duty. Mattan has a few good months left to enjoy his innocent youth. In all the goings on of the wedding we didn't get to spend as much time with them as we would have liked, nor did we get to hear as much about life in the army, life leading up to the army, or life in the war as we were interested in hearing. But the joy of the wedding transcended all else.