Bells

Weddings have claimed my life lately, and although the expense and time commitments can be overwhelming with six of these celebrations in one year, they are still all worth it. I've cried at each one I've been to. At the last wedding I was in, the bride and groom wrote their own vows, and I was practically tear-free until my friend started reciting hers for her now-husband, trembling and beginning to cry while she tried to express her desire to be a good wife.

I don't know what that means, really, to be a good wife. I have no doubts about my abilities to be a good mother because a mother's responsibilities just seem so clear-cut to me. But wifedom? I am so afraid I will fail at that. And I'm not ready for it. It's amazing to me that I have these friends who are so sure, so certain, that they're with the right person, making this huge, brave step. I envy that certainty.

The preacher said something that made me think -- that everyone at that wedding was now a part of this marriage, and that it was our job to support them through the years to come. That's when I stopped feeling like I was losing a little bit of my friend.

Congratulations, to all of my lovely ladies. I have such high hopes for you. Here's to a happy life together.

Peacock in the Snow

I like to pretend I am a movie buff, and if we're talking about "Empire Records," I'm golden. But I am woefully uneducated about serious cinema (even if I can fake my way through the French Nouvelle Vague) and even more so on the movies I'm Supposed to Have Seen -- like "Top Gun" and "Caddyshack." My friend Matt refers to it as the time I was in my time capsule. A time capsule forged by very strict Catholic parents.

I saw "Amarcord," last weekend at Landmark, my first Fellini! It's one of his more accessible films, the Internet tells me. That may be due to all the fart jokes -- and all the sex.

The cast of characters is made up of the inabitants of an Italian village. We follow their lives through a year, beginning with puff balls that announce the end of winter. Horny schoolboys, prostitutes, women looking for love, men looking for sex, dwarf nuns, lazy relatives, ridiculous teachers, warring spouses, lunatics. It's the whole shebang, really. We watch their lives unfold, but without ever fully focusing on one person to learn the whole story. We get slices of their lives, pieces of their desires and despair.

It's not a pretentious artsy film, either. It feels like you're waltzing through the village, picking up a visual here (a peacock in the snow, a dwarf nun in a tree) and a sound there (the hallooing schoolmarm, the blind man with the accordion), a joke (pee in the classroom) and a tragedy (death of a beloved mother) in the same breath.

How's that for a summer blockbuster?

My Best Shot

I left my first love behind in Virginia when my family moved to Georgia. His cocky, belligerent, big-nosed, puka shell necklace-wearing, soccer-playing self was my whole 16-year-old world, and when he broke up with me for another girl I was devastated. (Now they're married, so I think it was meant to be.)

My youngest sister just broke up with hers, and I sat here and tried to think of what to tell her to make it better.

All I came up with was:

1. Stop texting him. Change his name in your phone to something like "Don't Answer." (I think she chose "Selfish.")
2. Your big sisters and your mom have all been through this exact same heartbreak, and we understand.
3. I know in your head he's doing romantic things with another girl, but really he's probably playing video games and imagining you doing naughty things with another guy.

What I really want to say is something about how I don't think you ever love someone that way again, but you're not supposed to -- that first loves are special. Something about leaving yourself open to love in the future and not letting bad boyfriends scar you, about how everyone has sleepless, lonely 3 a.m. thoughts sometimes. But all I could come up with was some reassurance that if she drunk dials her ex one night crying, she won't be the first girl to do so.

And then I promised to take her driving tomorrow.

Not Coconut

Did you know...

That "quinoa" is not pronounced like "kee-NO-ah" but rather "keen-WAH"?

I did not, until I ordered it at Beleza. I like to think I accepted my humbling gracefully.

If you are an Atlantan, I highly recommend their cocktails -- the Beleza caipirinha and the Pisco Flower for me, which is "Inca Gold Pisco, St. Germaine Elderflower Liquor, Lemon." Delicious. Mark said it tasted like "dairy" because it was smooth and cold, and also "nutty." But Mark is the same person who didn't figure out his coconut rava masala dosai at Udipi had coconut until pretty much the end of the meal. The food at Beleza was less to my liking -- I swear my ceviche and my quinoa tasted like the same thing, and the tuna crudo was overly salty. The shrimp mocueqa I could eat every day, though.

The music was a bit loud for my taste, but I liked watching the crowd. Lots of cool black girls who were much more stylish than I, and then the kind of men who let the door shut in your face instead of holding it for you.

Man of La Mancha

When you think of Don Quixote, you very likely picture an old man fighting windmills. Your probably do not image that scene choreographed in a ballet, with beautiful sets, exciting music and gorgeous costumes.

But the Atlanta Ballet did.

Last night marked the best ballet I have ever seen. I think the rest of the audience agreed with me -- it was the clap-happiest assemblage I've ever been in. By the end, people just started clapping every time someone spun around. The dancers were feeding on it -- you could see them rise to the challenge of our frank adoration. It was absolutely fantastic, and I'll never forget it, much like my younger pilgrimages to see The Nutcracker.

But my favorite thing may have been the audience, particularly all the middle school girls and aspiring ballerinas, who were everywhere. They were all dressed up (sparkly dresses!) and couldn't sit still they were so excited. The one little girl behind us said, "I took a shower before I came here and now my hair is too fluffy!" and the other two piped up, "Oh no, you look good!" and "You should do a braid one day, on the one side? That would be so cool." Every time their friend danced on stage, they would whisper to each other how good she was(!!!). Through the filter of "Mean Girls," I think I'd forgotten this part of being 12 -- the unquestioning support we gave each other, before the insecurity and meanness set in. I thought my friends were pretty fucking great. And I was right, they were.

And on a different part of the spectrum was the woman in front of me, who clearly wasn't well. Sometime during the second act, she began rocking violently back and forth, yanking on her hair. She spoke to the plastic babydoll she was holding. I found it hard to concentrate on the ballet, because I was worried about her, but the people with her didn't move a muscle, so it must not have been anything out of the ordinary. I saw her stop rocking when the orchestra played a particularly swooping, romantic piece for a solo dancer, and that made me strangely happy, like the music and the dancing just took her out of whatever was troubling her. During intermission she fed a bottle to the baby and held a laminated photograph on her cheek. She was calmer during the next acts, but they left after the second intermission.

So Long

I will tell you one thing I do not miss: the wart that mysteriously appeared on my right pinky. I was ashamed of it. It made me feel like a witch. It is frozen and gone, and I have never gazed at my pinky with more love.

I will tell you something I do miss -- my moles.

I've always had two distinct ones: one on my tum and one more on the bikini line area. They tend to get in the way, but I never mind them until someone comments on them. Which is more often than you'd think, if you were, like me, raised with manners.

I was at the park lying down in the sunshine when someone again told me I should "really get that checked out." And I felt ashamed again, and I resolved to get rid of it, this freakish thing that people always commented on.

I didn't like the dermatologist. She talked to me like I was stupid and was impatient with me, so I didn't ask the questions I wanted to -- like, Will it scar?

She took them off with little ceremony. I couldn't watch. She told me I wouldn't stop bleeding.

And then I came home and thought about them being gone and felt bereft. I missed them, already. And it made me sad to think that I'd just cut off a part of myself for a reason that wasn't even particularly good.

When I told an old boyfriend what I'd done, he said, "Oh no! But I always liked those." And so did I.

They're still healing. I wonder what kind of mark they'll make after all.

Just Walkin.

There are outfits that make the occasion. Audrey Hepburn, "My Fair Lady": prime example.

I was not like Audrey Hepburn today, but I had an outfit that made my day what it was.

I was working from home in my jammies (read: T-shirt) until I had to meet my aunt and uncle at the Fed for lunch, at which point I put on a stifling, too-heavy black long-sleeved shirt, skirt and heels.

That was not the outfit.

I came home and spent hours more on my laptop until I realized I'd lost my verve, as I put it to my dear friend C.

I put on grass-green soccer shorts that once belonged to my mom, a brown spaghetti strap tank top, tan flip flops, and new big white sunglasses from Junkman's Daughter. And in this I walked to the convenience store to buy a Snickers ice cream bar and a six-pack of Coke. It was sunny and I was happy.

Fashion+weather+childhood pleasures.