Particulars

Wyatt approached the sleep of the dead last night or at least the sleep of a teenager. Astoundingly, he slept for nine hours in a row, undisturbed. He awoke only to nurse and now he sleeps again as though time has been forgotten.

He – dear child – is a barometer for the trip our family has just completed: one week, one plane ride, twenty hours of driving, four beds, two hail storms, and one darn car seat that has become the bane of Wyatt’s early existence. For reasons still uknown to us Wyatt just does not like the car seat. As soon as he realizes he is fixed and restrained by belts and buckles his lower lip begins to tremble, his eyes glaze over with tears and then he begins to cry. There was a stretch on the ups and downs of scenic I-68 when he cried for forty-five minutes, and our minivan took on the cramped feel and terror only Edgar Allen Poe might construct. (I need to say something else. Besides the car seat, Wyatt has been wonderful. Every day he grows and learns, and Anna’s and my delight continue to increase.)

Our odyssey began last Tuesday when we left our apartment in Pasadena and flew to Indianapolis where Anna’s parents graciously picked us up and carried us home to the Cooper estate. After one down day, we then loaded up a minivan and drove out to Washington, D.C. – taking Anna’s grandmother along with us as Wyatt’s babysitter – for Andrew Smith’s wedding.

The wedding itself was a marathon day, especially since it was outside in ninety-degree heat. By ten o’clock in the morning it was clear the sun would be victorious, and even at nine o’clock in the evening (as the reception was winding down) the heat still lingered around the dark in a taunting manner. Still, the joys and merriment of the wedding could not be surpressed. In fact, the image I will probably remember most might just be the face of the Episcopalian priest presiding over the service. He was a British gentlemen dressed for the day in a linen suit, carrying himself with class. Perhaps from afar he looked entirely composed, but from my vintage point (two deep in the groomsmen line) I had clear sight of the sweat building up on his forehead, running down his brow between his two eyes pursed like Clint Eastwood’s in a western, and down to the tip of his nose where it gathered and fell in large drops to the Book of Common Worship he was using to steady his pace and maintain his focus. The sweat stains will probably stay in that section of his liturgical book, which I find appropriate. There on those pages is mixed the lofty, holy words of a divine gift with the real, of-the-flesh experiences of humanity.

Weddings are one of the easiest things to idealize. When I imagined Andrew’s wedding a week before the event, I could only conjure glossy images in my mind, abstract thoughts about soft music, radiant dresses, timeless smiles. Those are the things photographers are paid to capture or create. But, the reality of the wedding day is always so much more faulted. For Andrew’s wedding the heat was not the only nuisance; there were also planes – lots of them. We discovered at the rehearsal that the wedding site was in direct line with the landing path for Ronald Reagan International Airport, which meant every two to three minutes a plane would fly over and drown out certain words and music. Despite all the inconvenience the planes produced, they also produced memories which will bind us as witnesses of the ocassion.

“We are immersed in particulars, not absorbed into generalities,” Eugene Peterson says.* And while we might prefer life to turn into a glossy, idealistic vision of abstractions, the best of life comes with wrinkles and blunders. Which means even the hottest of days and longest of roads are not to be avoided. But, for a day or two, I think we’ll try to avoid the car seat. There are some particulars all of us are not particularly fond of.

Wes

*Eugene Peterson. Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places.