Clowns to the Left of Me, Jokers to the Right, Here I Am, Stuck in the Middle with You

Table assignments. Saving the best for last, I suppose? Just when you think you've got this whole "wedding thing" all wrapped up, you're left with this doozy.



I led myself to believe I was going to get a free pass on this one. After all the responses were in, I did some quick math, took out a piece of paper and jotted some names down, and WHALA! (Wala?), I was done! I decided tables of twelve were the way to go (why have two extra tables, when that means spending extra cash on two extra centerpieces and table cloths and everything else?). And besides, I like the idea of people sitting at large tables and getting to mingle with more people.



So the math led me to the conclusion that each branch of the wedding pyramid would get 4 tables to seat (that would be me and Mr F together, my parents and Mr F's parents) with likely a little bit of sharing between the three to fill in tables.



As I said, I jotted our tables down in about 15 minutes. I then dashed off an email to the Mothers asking that they pass along their seating arrangements in tables of 12.



Two days later I got my Mom's list.



5 tables. 8 people at a table.



Needless to say, Mom does not follow directions well.

When I casually mentioned to Mom (ok, so maybe it wasn't so casually) that she exceeded her table allotment, she pulled the Ace card.

She cried.

Time out here. Not to be melodramatic, but shouldn't I be the one crying big elephant tears? Shouldn't the bride be having meltdowns and temper tantrums to get my way? Is this like that book "The Wedding" by Nicholas Sparks (don't judge me for having read it, that's neither here nor there right now) where the Mother is actually the one getting married and not the daughter and it's a giant surprise to the reader and when you finally realize it you're like "Oh my God! It's the MOM!"?

"It's the MOM!"

I'm taking a moment. Hold on.

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OK. So anyway, Mom is crying and telling me that she can't combine her tables with other random people because she doesn't want her guests to feel like she doesn't care about them. I'm trying to figure out how seating someone with another person translates into anything other than the statement "Math dictates that only 12 people fit at a table so I am seating you with eleven other people to add up to 12."

More importantly, I'm trying to figure out if the antibiotics I'm on will be rendered impotent if I drink a giant goblet of white wine while on this phone call. The orange bottle doesn't have a little sticker that says "don't drink while on this medicine" but I remember hearing that you should never mix antibiotics with alcohol because they won't work (not the alcohol, the antibiotics...I'm pretty sure the alcohol will work even better).

Oh, did I not mention that I have bronchitis and the wedding is a week away? Yeah, well if you didn't think I was allergic to my wedding before, I think we have indisputable proof now.

Since I can't keep my mouth shut, I ask Mom to explain why I should spend hundreds of extra dollars so that her friends and family don't have to break bread with others' friends and family (mind you, the "other" people we are talking about are Mr F's family and my friends - not exactly strangers off the street. Funny how Mom was all "into" the engagement and melding of families, until of course, her niece has to sit with Future Mother in Law's great aunt.)

At which point, Mom changes tactics and goes back to what a Jewish Mom knows best.

She sighs. And pauses. And then says "You do what you want, E&E." Her barely dried tears are still glimmering on her cheeks (and she declines to wipe them away). I recognize this ploy I know so well and greet it accordingly. Hello, Jewish Guilt! How are you today? I, for one, am doing shitty.

So what do I do? I choose the path of least resistance. Which is, believe it or not, just giving in to Mom. I tell FMIL that she must seat all of her guests at three tables and Mr F and I squeeze all of our guests (and some of FMIL's) at ours.

Done.

Or so I thought.

Until Mom gives me a diagram of where she wants her tables to be placed in the reception room.

All by her. At the front of the room. So that all of my friends will be wayyyyy across the room from me.

Keep following the path of least resistance and apparently you end up at the bottom of a lake of quicksand.

And You May Ask Yourself, Well How Did I Get Here? (Probably By Using GPS)

Apologies for my lack of posting. However. I am now less than 4 days away from my first dress fitting. I have eaten barely anything that qualifies as healthy in the last 7 days (unless perhaps pureed carrots with a stick of butter might be healthy? No? Stuffing? No? Pumpkin cheesecake? *sigh*) and I am sipping a glass of two-day old Zinfandel that Mr F actually stuck in the fridge last night and which now tastes like well, refrigerated red wine (which is crap). But that's not even the tip of the iceberg. That would be because I'm sitting at the kitchen table with four boxes of invitations which I am numbering, stuffing and stamping. Alone. (Not to mention that my wine glass isn't even within reach because I'm too nervous that I'll tip it over on the stupid invites, so I've placed it on on the counter - which is a good four feet from the kitchen table - and thus requires that I get up each time I want to take a sip).

Why so surly about sitting home stuffing envelopes (for the third night in a row) and drinking cold red wine? Well, besides the obvious, if you recall (which you probably don't, because this isn't the saga of your life, it's the saga of mine), I was not supposed to be the one to deal with the invites. That was supposed to be My Mother.

And so how did I end up with these little paper cut-inducing bastards sitting on my kitchen table and keeping me apart from my dear (cold) red wine?

Well, it all started with the hotel direction card inserts that I needed to put into the invitations (according to Mom obviously). I couldn't care less about direction card inserts. Honestly, everyone Google Maps everything or more likely, has GPS. So who cares? Well, apparently my Mom does. So I called the venue where I'm having the reception and they told me that they have direction cards already made up that I can use. So before heading on the road to go home for Thanksgiving (chock full of traffic), we swing by the venue and pick up the cards.

Once I get home to my parents' place in NJ, I take a peek at the invitations (which I love by the way) and my Dad turns to me and says: "Mom says you want to make sure that you number the back of the response cards."

Uhm, what?

"Dad, I think you must have heard wrong. Mom said that you guys will actually be taking care of the invitations. Which is why YOUR address is on the back of the cards. Right?"

My Dad looks confused (and scared - possibly because he could see the Devil in my eyes - which must be scary for a parent). "I don't know. You should talk to your Mother about this."

When my Mom came home later, I pounced. "I thought YOU GUYS were doing the invitations! Dad said I'm doing them! And that you said that I need to put numbers on the back. I can't! I have too much to do!"

Mom looked at me like I was someone she did not recognize (though more likely she was thinking about whether she could trade me in for a better, nicer version of a daughter), before responding: "What I meant was that we would do them together this weekend. And that 'we' needed to put numbers on the back."

Hmmm. I didn't know if I could trust this strained explanation. But like a hostage who can only get by on the hope that they will someday be free, I believed her.

The weekend passed. We ate turkey. Drank tequila. (No really - it was quite a Thanksgiving.)And I ate everything put in front of me and well as the contents of the fridge, the pantry, and the local pizza parlor.

Well times flies when you're sleeping in a twin bed and chugging the contents of your parents' liquor stash (it's not really a cabinet, more a grouping of bottles on the floor of the coat closet), and next thing we know, it's time for Mr F and I to go home. In an hour. Of course, the invitations never got done.

So I go downstairs to mention this to my Mom and we pull out the box with the invites. (Which look AWESOME by the way. Did I mention that? Yes, I did. But I love them! Sorry, but I need to dwell on the positive instead of what's coming next, which is....)

I pull out the direction cards that I picked up before we came home and look at them for the first time. Hmmm. Well this is....interesting. Apparently the "direction cards" don't. Actually. Provide. Directions. They just have a little map of the building with the name of the two streets adjacent to it. Perhaps helpful for someone intimately familiar with Baltimore, but not so much for pretty much anyone else. And since 90% of our guests are coming from places that are not Baltimore, this is not helpful. How can anyone in good conscience call this a "direction card?"

I turn to my Mom and show it to her, suggesting that we just forgo the direction card since everyone will figure it out by Googling the address (or they could call me, or my Mom, or Mr F, or they could call the hotel, which is where they are likely staying; or they could look at the Save the Date, which also had the info; or our website, which also...you guessed it...has the information!). So I feel good about skipping the directions.

Apparently, my Mom does not. She is aghast. "You must include directions."

Well, ok then. It's apparently been decided.

"Sooooo....." I began, "how do you want to deal with this? Do you want to just add on the website with a label to the bottom of this card? Or I guess we could just make an all-new card?"

My Mom is silent. (For once.)

More silence.

"Mom?"

"Honey, I'm not good with labels and stuff like that."

This is the point where I realized we could back and forth. I could ask her why she can't just do this herself and go to Kinko's to get printed directions on a new card; I could make the astute observation that it's ridiculous that her name is on the back as the "return address" (i.e., the address it originally came from) if she's not the one sending it out. I could snarkily comment that I secretly suspected she would never take care of this herself no matter what the direction cards looked like. I could remind her how I don't care about the direction cards, but she does, so really it's silly that I'm going to lug them across four states to do them myself when I'm also taking care of every other single thing to do with this wedding. I could say all of these things and indeed, I could say many more. But I can't fight anymore. Perhaps it was the post-Thanksgiving tryptophan kicking in, but I'm just tired. And I know that in the end I'm going to end up stuffing the damn invitations on my own anyway.

So instead I just sighed. And said, "Fine. I'll just do it."

She handed me over the giant cardboard box. I pretended my Mom was handing me a box full of chocolate cake, a bottle of 20-year tawny port, and the first three seasons of "Sex & The City" on DVD. I skip to the car. Until I remember my cardboard box is not filled with these gluttonous goodies. It's filled with heavy, expensive paper. That is not edible. I shove the box in the backseat.

And now I'm sitting at my kitchen table. On phase three of a multi-phase stuffing system. And very far away from finishing. And sadder yet, even further away from my very cold, very sub-par wine.

Talk To Me, Like (Mothers) Do

Conversation With My Mom. A Play in One Act.

*Ring* *Ring* (Ok, that's not necessarily accurate, since I actually have a ringtone on my cellphone, but I'm not going to write down the lyrics to "Sunshine of My Love" (which makes a GREAT ringtone by the way), so let's all just agree to suspend disbelief and agree to this: someone is calling me. And if you read the sentence above, I have a sneaking suspicion you might know who it is.).

Looking down at the phone, I see it's my Mom (yup, you guessed it). I'm on Amtrak, taking the train home to Baltimore from DC after having a couple of drinks after work. I try to weigh if the combination of two glasses of Chardonnay and being in a public place where screaming hysterically on the phone is woefully inappropriate provide sufficient insulation to deal with whatever my Mom has to say. The loving embrace of the wine makes the scales tipsy, and as I press the green button on my phone, I find myself feeling especially benevolent and patient.

"Hi Mom. How are you? How was France?"

"Hi Honey, I'm good. France was wonderful. [Blah blah blah...France...blah blah]. By the way, I called your Cousin in the Virgin Islands - did you hear they were hit by a hurricane?"

"No, I didn't see it on the news here."

"Yes, they're all right, thankfully. We found out about it the day after we got back from France."

"OK, good - I'm glad they're ok."

"Oh, by the way, I know you don't talk to Cousin that much, but just don't mention that we were in France."

"Uhm, ok, but why??"

"Oh, I don't know. I just don't think they need to know."

"But Mom, that is so random. I don't understand. Why?"

"Not everyone needs to know everything, E&E." I feel like I'm in a science fiction movie and I need to solve the riddle my Mother is saying to exit the rabbit hole. While I'm scratching my head in total bewilderment and wondering if The Matrix might hold a key to this puzzle, she goes on to say, "I got the invitation to your Wedding Shower."

Relieved I can stop thinking about Neo and Alice in Wonderland and how terrible I am at problem solving in general, I responding with an exuberant, "Me too! I think they're really pretty!"

"They're very cute. [She pauses.] By the way you should call Auntie Hostess [i.e., the Aunt hosting my shower. Although upon reflection that makes her sound like an Aunt who has a penchant for Ho-Ho's and Twinkies. Now that would be a Shower I could buy in to.]."

"Uhm...why should I call her?"

"Well, it appears that whichever of your friends sent out the invitation didn't have the right address for her and then didn't ask the right address and didn't send her one. I mean I guess they could have asked for the right address and sent one...but well, they just didn't."

[Incredulous. And back in the rabbit hole.] "Wait, I'm confused - how did that happen? I don't understand."

"Well, I don't know dear. But...[SIGH]...I told her that I would bring along my invitation to the Shower in Long Island and just show it to her so she could take a look at it, but then of course she couldn't keep it since I want to keep my invitation so I would have to bring it back to New Jersey."

[Looking around rabbit hole for mint julep to keep me company while I wander through labyrinth.] "So what are you trying to say?"

"Nothing, dear. You asked me why you should call your Aunt and I was just giving you all of the information."

"So are you trying to say you want her to get an invitation sent? - because you could have just asked me to ask my friends to send her an invitation."

[Mother apparently getting frustrated as well.] "I don't know why everything has to be so difficult. I'm just trying to help: you asked me how things were, so I was just telling you the story of what was going on."

"Yes, except that you really just wanted to tell me that my friends did the wrong thing. You could have just said - 'Auntie didn't get an invite. Send her one.' But instead you had to tell me that everything wasn't perfect. Why do you have to give me all of the unnecessary details which are sure to make me feel guilty? [Pausing] So is her address right or wrong on all of the shower invites?"

"I don't know."

"Well, the address she gave is on the invites to the Shower, the directions to the Shower and her wedding invitation - so if you want her to get a wedding invitation, then maybe you should call her and check all this."

"Well I think you should call her."

"She's your friend." [Auntie Hostess is actually a "fake" Aunt who is Mom's friend from college.]

"Well you need to call her and check that the address is right - it's your Shower."

"I don't understand! How did she tell you that she didn't get an invite because her address is wrong, but then she didn't give you her correct address or confirm that the address on the shower invitation is correct? I don't even know what I'm asking her!"

"I don't know, dear."

"I gotta run Mom. I'll talk to Auntie Hostess and get her an invite. We're coming into my station and I need to grab a cab...I'll be in touch tomorrow."

I shut the phone and stare at it, confused as to what happened and with a hankering for a mint-based cocktail. And then I feel guilty for essentially hanging up on my Mom. This is the essence of every conversation we have had for the last nine months. Is this just generational? To me, the point of the conversation was that Auntie didn't get an invite and I should make sure she gets one. But that was tucked away deep within the enigma that is my Mother's double talk. *Sigh* I'm pretty sure if you print out this conversation and hold it up to a mirror it will show you where the holy grail is buried.