A Zickefoose Wedding

Of all the rituals we humans carry out, weddings, I think, are the loveliest. Weddings are about promise and hope, about looking forward and believing the best of each other. Weddings celebrate the leap of faith we take when we mingle our fortunes with those of another, for better or for worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health.

Holly and Josh, July 2, 2017

It's no small thing, this making of promises, and we assemble everyone we love around us to witness as we put on ritual costumes and gather ourselves for the big leap. When I'm sitting in a wedding crowd, I scan the people around me as the vows are said, wondering what thoughts are rushing through their minds. For no one can hear two young people take those vows and not think about how those weighty, until-death-do-us-part promises have manifested, or will manifest, in their own lives. I find the whole thing fascinating, bemusing, affecting. But if I ever was, I'm not a wedding weeper now. I just settle back and dig the scene, the slight individual variations on this constant theme of everlasting promise and hope.

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My beloved brother Bob Zickefoose and his wife Bonnie were celebrating the union of their daughter Holly with Josh this magical day at the Irvine Estate and House Mountain Inn in Lexington, Virginia. What a place to hold a wedding!! The day was soft and warm, the evening was deliriously cool, dry and beautiful, and a fresh breeze was blowing across the patio and dance floor.

The view went on and on. 

There was no place else you'd want to be, and that's saying something.

All afternoon, I had the immense privilege of watching my three nieces and nephews-in-law wrangle their adorable babies. I was humbled and nostalgic as I witnessed their everyday, every-moment feats of good parenting. To be a toddler's parent is to subjugate oneself to the needs of an often irrational, always adorable small small human.  Here, Christy with Ben.

Josh (my niece Katie's husband) with Simon. 

Melting yet?

Cate (Ben's big sister) watches Max and Will break-dancing, flinging their legs around and under their anchoring hands in a mad buzz-saw circle. Cate, I'm with ya, girl. No doin' the coffee grinder for me, hell to the nope. 

Liam shows how you dance with a baby in a convenient sling. 

I absolutely adore this shot, for its unposed beauty, for the interaction between my niece Courtney and her sweet Charlie; Charlie's dad Tyler leaning in; the smile passing between Cam and Courtney's wee daughter Amy; the smile on my niece Clare's face.  Wow. Hold an iPhone up over your head so you can't even see what you're getting, and see what you get. Sometimes you get a painting.

My sister Nancy boogies with Claire, Cate and Amy. Nancy was not ready to go back to the hotel at 10:30 pm. I love that about her, love watching her get those little girls shaking. 

There were little girls in dresses everywhere I looked. That alone would get me up that mountain.

There would be a few tears, but only a few. There was too much fun to be had!

Cate (Christy and Will's wee girleen) was being noncompliant; not exactly bad but not real good; setting off on her own despite her parents' spoken admonitions. I followed, just to be safe. Finally she turned around to head back to her folks and gave me my favorite shot of the trip.  Fairies are real!!

Yep, I'm bad. But nobody minds. I'm good at it.

 My date for the event was tall, blonde and handsome. I'd waited 17 years for him.

He was worth the wait.

Come over here and let me get your eyes against that smoky Blue Ridge. O beautiful boy!

I could hear the Seldom Scene's sweet tenor harmonies in my head. Blue Ridge...Do you call to all your children like you've been calling me? Blue Ridge...Why are you calling me home?

Ahh, now that makes me weep. Do click on the link. Listen to Jonathan Edwards' and John Duffy's voices fly across the mountains! Let it keep playing for "Wait a Minute." Oh my gosh. Good bluegrass...gets me in the rootsy feels.

Because I am the Science Chimp, it was only  a few minutes before I was summoned in to identify a large moth that had found its way into the dining hall. 

Polyphemus! Huge batty miracle of the Appalachian night. Oh!

I carried it outside--it was like carrying a cool, mechanically flapping bird--and released it. After a few false starts, it warmed its flying muscles sufficiently to rise into the air and circle against the Blue Ridge landscape during the wedding ceremony! Something beautiful, released and joyous. No metaphors there, nope.

And sharp-eyed Max found the first regal moth I'd ever seen under a railing outside, and ran to find me. ZOMG. The little child shall lead us. Woot!!! Bear in mind this thing is about 5" long. 

Well, to be precise, I'd seen a regal moth, but not wearing this fabulous King Clown outfit.

You may recall its weiner-sized caterpillar, the Hickory Horned Devil, from a previous blogpost. 

Click on that link, and you'll get the whole life story of the regal moth, as well as a 2010 vintage pic of the family pickin' pawpaws! It's a classic.

Ooga booga booga! his only defense

Being Science Chimp 1 and Science Chimp 2, Liam and I had to sneak off before dinner and find some wild food. 

Around the edge of the property, wineberries (Rubus phoenicolasius), native to Asia, were competing with native black raspberries (above) for space, and mostly winning.

Exotic or not, the wineberries were absolutely delicious.

Seeing my son in dress clothes slowly reaching through the thorny tangle for berries to feed his skirt-bound mama did a lot for me. Let me just say that skirts and dresses are USELESS. You can't do anything in them. Ugh. I will wear them for a few hours when required. Then it's back to the sturdy boots, pants and socks, which take me through the vegetation unscratched.

These things are GOOD!! Somebody said he looks like Malfoy here. Well he may, but there's not a cruel or evil bone in this boy's body.

Wineberries: for better or for worse, they're definitely winning here. We ate them all ourselves. Yep, we did. And we didn't feel guilty, well not very, because the food we were about to get was so darned delicious. 

But I'm getting ahead of myself. We were here not for giant moths, delicious food, or dancing fairies. We were here for Holly and Josh's wedding!

My brother Bob Zickefoose emerges with the bride.

And Josh walks her back into the hall. Everything is changed from this day forward.

And just before that magic moment and a lovely ceremony, Bob's son Aaron and son-in-law Josh K. played and sang some Beatles and Chet Atkins tunes. It was home-made music and it was wonderful to hear "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" and "I'll Follow the Sun" in this setting. And then my brother Bob sang a special song for the couple. I believe he borrowed the voice of an angel for the occasion. My updated iPhone always crashes now when I launch the Video function, so I missed the intro.

Bob and our sister Dancin' Nancy. 

Bob played the 1964 vintage Guild he bought when he was Liam's age. It's the only guitar he's ever owned, the only one he says he's ever needed. The fretboard is deeply grooved with use. Three stout screws and some glue hold the long-broken head together. Five more screws keep the bridge one with the guitar's cracked body. But it still keeps true. And true is what my brother is, in word, voice and deed. 

Father-daughter dance.

Late night cousin dances

The five Zickefooses. Barbara, Nancy, Micky, Bob, and me. How lucky can you get, to have such people in your corner?

I made this post for my family, but for you, too, because it was all too beautiful not to share. Here's to new beginnings and children well-raised!

Back to the Blue Ridge: Natural Bridge

It was time to travel back to the state where I was raised, Virginia. There was a family wedding, and nearly everyone would be there. I couldn't wait to see my brother and sisters! Liam and I stopped for gas before hitting the highway and saw this, which sent me into fits of laughter. Something about the shameless Muppets knockoff and the troupe's name gave us the giggles. It was going to be a good trip.

The drive from southeast Ohio to Lexington VA, of course, was fabulous. Mountains and sky and green and blue. Heaven, Almost Heaven, Heaven.

My dear brother Bob at the "I Do Barbeque" with his newest grandson, Simon.

I haven't experienced it, but boy do I get it. Your baby's baby. Oh my. The love was obviously mutual as Simon asked for more kisses.

He wanted my iPhone something awful. His daddy keeps his iPhone hidden away. All that will come too soon. Oh what a face! Liam and I were totally Simonized.

He got the phone! Bob's grandchildren Gabe and Emma as witness. 

We spent a great deal of time simply watching Simon. Baby TV. 

We all fetched up in a hotel in Lexington.  There was much yakking and hanging out with kids. Max wanted his hair to look like Liam's, so there was pomade applied in the hotel lobby.

On the morning of the 5:30 pm wedding, we decided to go as a herd to see Natural Bridge, an enormous rock formation about 10 miles away. We scattered like sheep, but should have caravaned. Liam and I climbed in sister Micky and David's back seat; I launched my iPhone's map function with great confidence, and chose "Natural Bridge, Natural Bridge, VA." That oughta do it. 

We saw signs pointing to Natural Bridge, but figured they referred not to the formation but to the town. We followed the GPS against my sister's better instincts in the opposite direction, down a very narrow country road. It was beautiful! It went on and on! With no sign of Natural Bridge! And dwindling hope of ever finding it!

We wound up at the intersection of two narrow country roads, in the middle of absolutely nowhere. Arrived. Arrived. Arrived! Siri kept saying that until I made her stop. Not arrived. Not even close.

We retraced our route, followed analogue signs like they did in olden days, and my sister and brother in law didn't even get mad at me. We finally found the Visitor Center for Natural Bridge, regrouped via text message, bought our tickets and proceeded as a clan.

The reason Nancy, Micky, Barb and I wanted to go to Natural Bridge was to vanquish our only collective memory of it, which was the Easter morning in 1967 our parents woke us at 3:30 AM, stuffed us in the car with cereal and acrid orange juice from concentrate in our bellies, and raced to make it from Richmond out to Natural Bridge before sunrise. There was to be a service at sunrise with the Virginia  Polytechnic Institute (aka Virginia Tech) choir singing, and my brother Bob was singing with them, and we had to race to get there in time for it. Hauling kids out of bed in the middle of the night always takes longer than you'd hope. I was nine. Micky was 11. Nancy was 17. Barb was 21. Bob was 19. Lucky him, he was already there with the choir. He didn't have to make the drive with DOD at the wheel and Ida fretting shotgun. "Day-ull! Slow DOWN!" My father tore through the dark streets of downtown Richmond, and we were already feeling queasy when he hit the curving mountain roads in pre-dawn darkness. Then the throwing up began. He would slow the car down, have the urper open the car door, disgorge, then command us to close the door so he could proceed at his dizzying, pukifying pace.  No mollycoddling for us! It was a low point for both parents and parented. I remember gazing at Natural Bridge through a lingering haze of nausea and astonishment that we'd done all that to get here for this. We all needed a new memory for the place. Gorblimey, that was 50 years ago!

A nature hike should do the trick! Let's look at nature. Nature's pretty neat.

Jules! Come see this bracket fungus!

Amy and Charlie smile for the camera. Sorta.

 A huge fishing spider waits on a rock.

Northern water snake basks in flood debris.

A male bluegill tends his neat round gravelly nest, hoping a female will come by to lay eggs. Or perhaps he's watching over eggs already laid in the gravel.

A gigantic snapping turtle haunts the waters along the path, hoping someone will throw a salami sammitch in. He ain't picky. Snapping turtle is hungry!

Sticklebacks in stickleback towns on the submerged rock surfaces. I told what I could remember of Bert Holldobler's teachings in Animal Behavior. He gave me a B plus. I was a half-point off of an A in my favorite class EVER. Standard issue Teutonic professor behavior.

Some elegant serif-enhanced graffiti on the way. Wow. Nice font! Especially to be carved in solid rock. We're so soft and lazy these days, with our spray cans.

An equally elegant six-spotted tiger beetle rests for a moment on the rock face. 

Natural Bridge did not disappoint. What a piece of rock. Man. 

Standing directly beneath it, I could hear an occasional car roar over. Unbelievably, Route 11 (Lexington's main drag) goes RIGHT OVER TOP OF NATURAL BRIDGE. 

An ugly little metal wall was erected on either side of the road so people wouldn't know they were atop the bridge. There had been suicides. I was told you can't tell when you pass over it now. The walls keep you from looking over. You can just see the straight line of the wall in this photo, at the bottom of the U of sky. 

Look! George Washington was here!!

The beautiful stream that cut Natural Bridge proceeds on its way, with a waterfall.

There were Louisiana waterthrushes and phoebes singing all the way. My sister Barbara stopped to chat with Amy and Cate about their jewelry and shoes.

Another visitor offered to take a shot of me, Liam and Max when it became apparent that we were having trouble getting the whole scene in a selfie.

The boys, dwarfed by the monstrous structure, pass by the rows of pews where we listened to the Virginia Tech choir on Easter morning FIFTY YEARS AGO. Gaah I feel so ooollld.

The visit and the hike were marvelous. I now think of Natural Bridge in a completely different light, the bright blue, green and white light of a July day, with my family all around. 

Next: the wedding, and all the magic around it.