Perches in the Soul » Weddings http://perchesinthesoul.com Sat, 28 Aug 2010 19:07:55 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 Beauty and Pain http://perchesinthesoul.com/2009/04/26/beauty-and-pain/ http://perchesinthesoul.com/2009/04/26/beauty-and-pain/#comments Mon, 27 Apr 2009 02:05:56 +0000 Amy http://perchesinthesoul.com/?p=316 I am in love with the NICU. The tiny, fragile patients with uncertain futures who in their vulernability are beautiful. In their beauty though there is pain, these tiny humans know pain of their larger inpatients but they have few ways to articulate it. There is pain for the ones we can’t save and for the ones we can but whose futures seem less than optimal (rather it be medical, social, etc). But there is such unparaelled joy in the ones we can save, the ones who grow and develop as they should.

This weekend my spinster Aunt got married at 47 to a widower with 4 kids. It was a beauitful ceremony filled with the excitment and joy surrounding any wedding. But there was saddness too, sadness for a mother who died before seeing her children grow up.

I hurt my knee at the wedding. I didn’t do anything but I woke Sunday morning with a hot, swollen knee that felt like I had torn something to bits. Last week I dislocated my elbow… I’m a  bit of a rheumatological mess right now. I’m in love with my work, the babies and peds in general but i am in constant pain. Its been a long winter.  I do believe that the hip’s death spiral is putting undue pressure on everything else.  I have resigned myself to surgery in March of 2010. I am dreading it, the idea of going back to the place I lf behind a decade ago is scary.  but I am grateful for it.  That there is a light at the end of the tunnel! Its a beautiful thing.

and the truth is I want to get on with my life, with doctoring babies and dancing at weddings and loving it.  thats a beautiful reason to be willing to take the risk of surgery.

]]> http://perchesinthesoul.com/2009/04/26/beauty-and-pain/feed/ 1 Wal-Bride… http://perchesinthesoul.com/2008/08/06/wal-bride/ http://perchesinthesoul.com/2008/08/06/wal-bride/#comments Thu, 07 Aug 2008 00:16:30 +0000 Amy http://perchesinthesoul.com/?p=195 I went to David’s Bridal today for the first time. I was to be fitted for my first real bridemaid’s dress. I walked in and found myself in a huge room filled with rows and rows and rows of dresses. I shivered in the air conditioning. One side was for bridemaids and the other side for brides. It was an overwhelming swarm of purples, blues, greens, blues, oranges and pinks in contrast to egg shells, cream and white. I was absolutely overwhelmed by the selection and by the sheer majesty of a sacrament/rite of passage/etc supersized and Americanized! stood there for a minute and waited to be directed to the blue light special on aisle 8. It took me 10 minutes to wade through the forest of dresses to find someone who worked there. I told her I needed to be fitted for a dress. She found the bride’s name in the computer and pulled a dress from the forest of a different shade but the same model as my dress. I tried not to think about the 1700 other size 6-8 girls who had worn this generic 100+ dollars worth of satin to be fitted. It reminded me distinctly of buying a car, I was test driving and then sending away for the right color. I was led to a changing room. It fit although it will need to be hemmed. I looked at myself in the giant mirrors up on a stool they use for altering and felt overdone, on display and well ridiculous . Is this beauty? Is this what I am supposed to want? Is this what every little girl dreams of? Walking into a store like this, pulling the magical white dress from the plastic hanger and then standing up here for everyone to see how beautiful she is?  This is one of the ultimate displays of love between two people?

10 minutes later and 150 dollars later I have a brown satin dress on order.

Where is the sacred in this strange form of marriage? In all the money we spend? In the party we throw? In the gifts we receive? There is celebration and love of course but where is mystery, the divine in all the fluff. What am I really doing…Am I assisting my friend by standing with her, affirming her commitment, her love? That I think I can do, the rest of it well I dont quite understand. I know very little of these things of love, of romance, of glamor, of marriage . But the glimpses of what I see I find disappointing.

I love my friend and I will do my best for her.

and so I enter into to this strange cultural ritual.

]]> http://perchesinthesoul.com/2008/08/06/wal-bride/feed/ 0