Still Sore About the Dry Wedding...
I realized nothing makes me miss St. Frances more than being around her family, and all the old grayhairs from church.
It was actually fun to catch up with Mr. and Mrs. Green, our old youth pastor, play tag with Ginny Rhienn's kids. There was a nacho bar and cupcakes (but as I emphasized last time: no booze). And then St. F's brother, Red, got up in front of everyone and thanked us for coming.
"I just want to thank you for celebrating with us, you all mean so much to us and we're glad you could be here."
The thing is, the words sound more genuine as I type them than when he spoke them. Brother Red always seems to be saying exactly what he's supposed to say. Back in high school, I tought I was one of the up-and-coming leaders in the church youth group, so Brother Red offered to mentor me in the Bible and shit once a week. Besides getting to spend time with one of the youth group's super-christians, most of what I got out of our meetings was a stack of trite sayings, acrostics and Bible verses on scraps of paper. When Red talks, I feel caught in a blizzard of those little scraps – message fragments preapproved by whatever Biblical authorities are in vogue with the evangelicals at the moment.
Maybe it bugs me as a PR flack. I know message discipline when I see it. He hits his bullet points.
Whereas Brother Red always seems to reading off some invisible teleprompter, his sister, my roommate, my oldest friend St. Frances is authenticity personified. I missed that yesterday.
