My wife and I spent a good deal of the weekend helping a friend’s adopted son get married. It was a rather-old fashioned sort of wedding—the groom’s family and friends handled most of the food, set-up, and decorating. Another friend baked the cake, and yet another volunteered her lovely home and yard for the actual ceremony. The groom, best man, and I along with the groom’s mother and friends set up two pavilions on Saturday in case it rained, which was a good idea because it actually did rain on Sunday, the day of the ceremony. I will say in the weather’s defense that it cleared up long enough for the lovely wedding itself, then started to really come down afterwards, which was fine since by then we’d gone inside for the reception.
The wedding, as I said, was rather old-fashioned in that it was put on for the most part without professional help. Even the wedding singer was a friend of the family. In another way it was completely modern, or at least 20th century. The groom was multi-racial, the bride was a white girl with deep country roots. Bear in mind that this is Mississippi. I love my state, but there was a time in my living memory when merely attempting a wedding of this sort would get a cross burned on your lawn, or worse. So what happened when the neighbors of the friend who had donated her house for the ceremony found out what was going on?
They turned out to help.
Despite so many people and politicians working so hard to prevent it, sometimes things really can get better. I do try to keep that in mind, but it’s so much easier with a little reminder now and then.
As I’ve mentioned here before, I’m a beginning guitar player. But there’s an aspect of this musical adventure that I haven’t mentioned before, and I do think this simple fact needs to be acknowledged—as a guitar player, I suck. A reader might be forgiven at this point for observing the obvious—“You’re a beginner. Of course you suck.” Sorry, no, it goes far beyond lack of practice and experience. While I’ve always loved music, I discovered early on that I have little natural aptitude for making it. If there’s a musical gene, it does not run in my family and I for sure don’t have it. Yet here I am taking up guitar and massacring “Smoke on the Water” like any beginning fourteen year old (and yes, they still do). Only, of course, I’m a looong way from fourteen, when such things might be considered part of the normal course of events. There’s nothing normal or natural about what I’m doing. So why am I doing it?
Richard Parks 