Spring But Not Yet April

So today begins Spring, and we're off, most of my family, in a few hours to D.C. for what I've named the Big, Fat, Media Wedding. My nephew of another mother, Scott, is a writer and reporter for AM station WTOP and his fiancee Samantha is a producer for CNN, and so the guests will include lots of their friends from the biz -- none famous, I'm told.

Spring is special in DC because of the cherry trees in blossom, and I've seen it once, years ago. I was there for some depos, and I strolled the Mall, and later, met Kenny and his then new girlfriend Joelle who took me to a neighborhood in Bethesda which reminded me of Coral Gables where the trees are plentiful and beautiful as well.

We're taking the grandsons, and the Little Man is already excited about the Air and Space Museum and Natural History, where I told him we would look for the "Mommies" he learned about, but not to be scared since they're just "Dead Adyptians." I loved and adored him from the day he was born, and I love and adore his toddler brother Baby Man, but I sort of knew I would really relate to him after age 5, when we truly talk and I tell him essential things about life, like how orange goes with green and not blue, even though his Mommy, D1, Aunt, D2, and Tio Jonfin are all Gators.

The wedding has 4 events -- a Shabbos dinner tonight, rehearsal tomorrow at a sports bar at Navy Pier, the big event Sunday, and a brunch Monday am. The size and scope of this celebration gives great laughter to my family, as our dear Barry loves to fashion himself a populist and man of the people -- tends to disdain rich folk - and yet the 4 big events have the Ds saying this wedding weekend is like "Shahs of LA."

Paul and Patricia are coming up tomorrow, and many of the local guests are friends I have connected -- Paul pointed that out to me. Our partnership of now past 30  years led to his friends becoming mine, and vice versa. And our Rabbi, Yossi, adding to the Shah-like nature of this weekend, is being flown in specially to do the service Sunday night.

Yossi is the busiest man I know -- his enormous and shiny new Center just opened, and I asked whether giving up 2 full days was tough for him. It is, but he adores Barry for all he has done for his family and the community, and wouldn't have dreamt of refusing this big request.

So it ought to be joyful, and yet I've been in a deep funk over the past days -- ironically, as T.S. Eliot pointed out, precisely when the rebirth of the land takes place -- April in the epic Eliot poem.

There have been some deaths of friends' parents, and also some battles with life threatening illness, and some deep family issues -- I guess they just all got to me at the same time.

But last night, there was D2, who I've come to understand is the wisest, most level headed in the family, snapping me back to happy reality -- reminding me that this should be a banner weekend.

And hopefully it shall.

Young weddings, despite the drama surrounding them, are indeed symbols that, no matter how bad things are in a nation or indeed the world, we look to the future.

So my future is to get on a jet plane, like the great John Denver song, but knowing when I should be back again.

May it be a weekend of laughter and celebration, and not at all, as Eliot wrote, the cruellest.