On Saturday, June 4th, our eldest granddaughter, Sophia Fleming-Benite, married Raymond Wang on the grounds of the fabulous, funky colonial farmstead belonging to her uncle and aunt, Richard Fleming and Katie Dixon, in Kingwood Township near Frenchtown, N. J. The mother of the bride—also a Katy but with a usefully variant spelling—is our daughter. The father of the bride, our son-in-law, the eminent Sinologist Zvi Ben-Dor, was one of the two officiants, the other being the father of the groom, Bob Wang, also a professor. So the erudition was conspicuous, the culture multi, the joy unbounded, and the weather absolutely perfect. This last point was hardly banal given the event’s open-air setting on a greensward to be reached only after a quarter of a mile of gravel lane marinated by several previous nights of thunder showers. Though the impressive ecumenicism of the ceremony—roughly Sino-Judaic-Franciscan, I would say—avoided all parochial spiritual sectarianism, I might give some small credit to my own silent orisons to Aeolus, the god of winds, and the stormy goddess Tempestas.
But only very small. The wedding couple are in themselves such magnificent specimens of benign energy, moral majesty, and boundless promise as to restore some sense of that social confidence so severely undermined by two years of dystopian plague and the seemingly remorseless bombardment of the daily news. None of us can ever be wholly prepared for the storms of life, literal or metaphorical, but Raymond and Sophia strike me as about as fit for life’s struggle as they are destined for its happiness and satisfactions. That seemed to me as well to be the general sense of the gathering—upwards of a hundred friends and family, I would have thought, vibrant with admiration, congratulations, vibes of universal amity, and the determination to enjoy to the fullest one great party. This was in the form of a dinner-dance beneath a spacious tent, itself enclosed within a yet more encompassing canopy of towering old forest, through the foliage of which, when one stepped out, shone occasional glimpses of those stars which are the pilgrim Dante’s culminating vision of Love in his imagined Paradise—"the Love that moves the sun and the other stars”.
I find myself challenged by certain expectations of the write-ups of weddings as I find them in the social pages. What of the bride’s dress, for example? Well, Sophia would look gorgeous in a potato sack, so naturally she looked even better in something very different—not a traditional bridal gown, but a stunning long white dress in a fine fabric that gave off the tactile effect of tiers of finely beaten copper. Both of the principals’ mothers were dressed in arresting red, explained by Mrs. Wang as by Chinese cultural custom the requisite wedding hue. The grandmother of the bride, whose beauty has but mellowed since her own somewhat more modest marital event precisely six decades earlier, was a symphony in blue. Put this all together and you get—yes, red, white and blue! The bunting of our national allegory. Sort of looks like America.
Lulu and Cora Louise, Sophia’s younger sisters, were of course the bridesmaids and ring-bearers. Of our six grandchildren, five are girls, including all three in the bride’s family. The three Fleming-Benite sisters invite an analogy that must commonly spring to the grandparental mind in such circumstances. What naturally presents itself to the classicizing temperament is, of course, the vision of the Three Graces. Though these young ladies have names--Aglaia, Thalia, and Euphrosyne—I seldom can remember them. What is important is that as a group they are the classical mythological embodiments of feminine elegance, beauty, and joyousness, qualities that on Saturday last were on conspicuous display in the backwoods of Kingwood, New Jersey.
The ceremony, beautifully crafted yet pleasingly relaxed, almost took place at its appointed hour, and almost all the guests had arrived in time. There are certain situations for which almost is in fact the most desirable possible state of affairs. A definite and significant formality of concept joined with a flexible and relaxed mode of execution to form a union of what Chaucer called sentence and solace—deep meaning and lots of fun. And, boy, was there ever fun! The music began even before the ceremony, and not just any music, but music of exactly the right kind—a line of cool New Orleans brass lined up in front of the old house’s façade looking onto a long meadow, gently sloping down toward a distant pond. It was in this field that the chairs for the guests had been arranged, the slight declination of the ground creating the effect of a natural and spacious amphitheatre.
Without claiming objectivity as an observer, I have to say that this wedding was the most joyously received large event in which I can remember having participated. From time to time I read in the papers of certain initiatives—the building of a concert hall, perhaps—as being “public-private” undertakings, meaning that they come from the cooperation of individual and communal efforts. So I would describe the wedding at Kingwood. It made good use of expert professionals: caterers, a “wedding planner,” musicians, sanitary engineers who introduced us to completely new horizons in portapotties. But all these amiable and competent experts were at the service of, rather than in exerting control over the wedding couple and the site hosts. Richard and Katie Dixon, lord and lady of the manor, laboring for months in further beautifying their beautiful domain, had produced an horticultural masterpiece. I doubt that the grounds ever looked better in all their two-hundred and thirty-two years.
The dining and the dancing were superb, granting the necessity for the latter to be “age appropriate”. In fact the vigorous participation of several small children added a delightful dimension to the activity on the dance floor. Of this we were observers rather than participants. In my condition anything more lively than a sarabande is unthinkable. An edible joint of chicken produced by a caterer is a rare achievement. The delicious one these people produced was virtually unprecedented. And of course there were other hilarities and highjinks—including a moving and heartfelt speech shared by a married couple among the newlyweds’ closest friends, random bursts of uproar among the dining tables, the modulated hum of happy fressers. I myself was honored by Sophia and Raymond to propose a toast, which concluded thus: “As they set out on their committed life together and their destined mission to leave our needy world a better place than they found it, we, their families and their friends, wish them all happiness, good health, material sufficiency, and the never-failing comfort and support of mutual love and companionship.” From my lips, I hope, to the ear of God. The party continued after the geriatrics’ witching hour, though how long I cannot say. I awoke to a silent breaking dawn, preternaturally still and empty save for the many musics of many birds. Everyone had disappeared while I slept. The newlyweds, I presume, were on their way to their honeymoon, and to their new life together, leaving us all the richer for the privilege of having witnessed its glorious moments of inception.
two, always better than one
The newlyweds are fortunate to have as a model of sustained marital happiness that attractive older couple holding hands.
ReplyDeleteWhat a nice thing to say.
ReplyDelete