The Doubleheader

There was a lot of love in the air on Saturday.

You may not have noticed. You may have only woken up to a ridiculously warm, 75-degree January day in Houston, Texas without a care in the world. I think someone forgot to tell South Texas that it is winter. Meanwhile, 25 miles North in The Woodlands, I had been attending wedding festivities for a full 48 hours already.

48 hours. You heard me.

I flew from Dallas to Houston on New Year's Day, rented a car with an obsolete GPS system and got well-acquainted with the highway system of the greater Houston area. My Thursday-Saturday were meticulously scheduled for wedding events. I had Google Maps less than organized into a folder, along with a sheet of the addresses and times I was expected where, phone numbers for those destinations and various invitations. Not to mention a three-page itinerary of plans for going to the Fiesta Bowl in Phoenix on Sunday morning, but that is another story.

I arrived to a deserted resort on Thursday, which was quickly filled up by my family, extended relatives and relatives of those relatives, etc. by Friday afternoon. The wedding I came in town early for was my friend from college, MD's wedding, while my family was in town for the wedding of a family friend. My cousin KH was the Maid of Honor in that wedding, and since our mothers (who are sisters) had the bright idea that KH, her brother BH, my brother LH and I should all share a hotel room, we had a full two days of chaos that comes with siblings in their early twenties, used to plentiful personal space, in close quarters with multiple suitcases.

Two girls, on one hand, who constantly had to be awake, showered and in different outfits and moving from Point A to Point B at specific times. Two guys, on the other hand, who only got out of bed at 10:30 on Saturday because they were promised omelets, and who spent most of their time lounging in plush white beds with strewn Sports sections from different papers and trails of shed clothing everywhere.

In spite of the hectic schedule, I got to enjoy parts of each wedding (one's ceremony, the other's reception). My friend MD asked me to do a reading in her wedding on our way to the river over the summer, and I said yes because she's one of my favorite, most unlikely of friends from college and because I have to start somewhere in overcoming my phobia of public speech.

I met MD before my freshman year (her sophomore year) because she was my counselor at Fish Camp, a long weekend in Middle of Nowhere, East Texas where incoming freshman go to meet each other and learn about the traditions of the university. Never having attended a non-Christian affiliated camp without wardrobe and curfew restrictions, I was wide-eyed and naive to the goings-on of my fellow campers and clung to her like girl-shaped glue. We ended up bonding over a mutual love for all things Kate Spade, and I thought of her as a mentor as we kept a standing lunch date on Fridays for four years. Class schedules were altered and all others were put on hold for those few hours we spent together every week.



EB, the other bride, is the cousin of my cousins, who I have literally known my entire life because we were born the exact same day: January 14, 1985. We actually became friends in college, when she went to UT and randomly ended up living two doors down from my friend MK. I walked into her reception late, but in time to witness a colliding of many of my worlds.




I somehow managed to not eat between the two events, and since I was the designated driver of BH, KH and LH who were a few beers and glasses of champagne the wiser, I became the chauffeur to the first fast food restaurant we could find: McDonald's.

When we returned to the hotel I heard the sack rip as we got out of the car, and in the time it took for me to walk around to other side of the car with the accident, I witnessed a mess of french fries, gravel, and my brother and cousins, crouching over them. Eating. Eating french fries off the ground in their wedding attire.



"Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength,
While loving someone deeply gives you courage."
-Lao Tzu