The Bride's Eyes

 

She was an old friend from High School, and I had come back to New York for her wedding.  She had stayed home while the rest of us had escaped to the four corners.  The walk down the aisles, the wedding day smiles, the flowers, the wedding dress, were perfect but something was off. He was fun and nice to her but a bit controlling and self-righteous.  I thought she could do better.  She was the kindest, most honest person I knew.    They had history already, dark and light, but they were going for it that day. 

At the reception I distracted the brides’ maids with stories and adventures from the west and Europe, where I was headed the next day.  I was searching but still hadn’t found what I was looking for.  My only job that day was to turn on the music for their first dance, “Stay With Me” by Genisis.  It’s a slow starter and they wondered if It was ‘on’ at first but then they began to dance tentatively.  I’m not sure they heard all the words.  We all systematically joined in dancing, fathers, mothers, family and friends.  By the time I got to the bride we were swinging raucously and we slipped into some kind of Virgina Reel with do-se-dos and Alabama twists, just like we used to do at the Bluegrass at the Beach shows.  As she flew away from me in the afternoon light and then returned, I realized that she had the bluest eyes I had ever seen.  I had noticed them before, for sure, but today they were bright and shining, full of life and promise, potential and hope.  The moment was fleeting as she spun away from me to another guest beau, but it stuck in my soul. 

Twenty years and three beautiful daughters later, he found what he was looking for at work and told her he never loved her in a messy divorce.  He was nasty.  She was devastated.  Still is.  Now she sits at home and wonders what she could have done better. She was the perfect wife, picking him up at the station on rainy days and having a beer and dinner ready when he got home.  Devoted to the kids as well, she forgot about herself and lost her mojo and confidence but not her verve and empathy.   Going into the City through Brooklyn one day she said, ‘this was the train that he took every day’, and we walked across the Brooklyn Bridge like he did on 9-11.  She had never taken the trip with him and marveled at how hard it must have been for that poor bastard she still loved.  Let it go.

She tried dating but it was no use trying to reboot, so she lives alone and watches life passing by, made for pair bonding and double occupancy.  She doesn’t mind being alone as much as being lonely.  I wonder what I could have done, could have said, now and then.  ‘Run’.  ‘Come to Europe’.  Just say ‘no’.  But it was too late.  Time had come and gone, and we both became who we were destined to be.  As we walked down the boardwalk at Brighton Beach recently, the clouds parted and as the sun and sea reflected, I briefly saw the glint of that most unbelievable blue in her eyes that had faded slightly, but not extinguished.  She is going to be all right.

 

Megan 2

 

After this Summer of Joy found Megan McKenna winning the local primary and Kamala Harris taking over for Joe Biden, it is not surprising that Affordable Housing has taken center stage on our national and local tickets.  It’s the economy people, and nothing affects our personal economy as much as housing, in America and Summit County.  Ever since housing became a commodity to buy and sell and flip and split has the price of owning a home become so relatively expensive, especially here.   

It is no wonder that Megan has embraced this battle as her avocation, advocation and occupation.  She is working with the Housing Advocate at Mountainlands Housing Trust after spending a decade teaching Science in the high school and another decade throwing bombs and running sleds for the ski patrol at The Canyons.  She knows how valuable a home is after growing up here in the middle class and struggling to buy her own home in her own hometown.  Even with an advanced education and highly honed skills like Megan’s, this is something many of our families are struggling with, bridging the precarious gap between earning a living wage and flirting with homelessness.  As our wealthy country tries to save the middle class and their respective housing options, Megan knows first-hand about this strain in a wealthy county with a vibrant and diverse work force.  Our housing crisis affects employment and wages, traffic and growth, climate and environment, education and economics, affordability and sustainability.  Home is the epicenter of our relations and religions, our love and libido, our reproductive choices and our American voices.  Everything starts with a home: families, culture, career and life.

This election is a new opportunity to reboot our leadership with young but experienced, active and involved, wise women.  We need down home, salt of the earth, empathetic representatives to advocate for what is important now, and in the future, for this country and this county.  Consider Kamala and Megan in November as leaders who know the price of progress, the cost of community and the worth of home.