If I Had to Bet the Farm

I’ve been trying to process my trip home and some of the things that have gone on in the meantime. I flew in to San Antonio the night before my friends’ wedding and was pleasantly surprised to find out a whole group of other people I hadn’t seen for years — up to a decade — were going to be in attendance. We live all over the place, but we all managed to rally.

My taxi driver from the airport to the hotel peered in the rearview mirror and said I looked exhausted. I explained that 20 hours in airports and on planes will do that to a person. He kept asking me what living in North Korea was like. Then he said, “Well, you are home now so just rest and enjoy your loved ones. Welcome home.”

I had only two nights in town, including the one I flew in on, but once I finally got to the hotel, showered and ordered room service, it was beyond my powers of control to stay awake for the gang to arrive back at the hotel from their night out. Instead, I popped out of bed wide awake at 4 am the next morning. Showered and dressed and went for a morning walk. Wrote a letter to the happy couple, who are two of my oldest and dearest friends, especially the one I used to be in Girl Scouts with, two and a half decades ago. Drank some lobby coffee, waited for the front desk attendant to change and drank some more.

Mid-morning a message came through that I could join the bride in her room while she was getting ready. Her mother is like a second mother to me — I spent countless nights and even weekends in her parents’ house in high school and throughout college, when I was home for a visit. Seeing them again after almost a decade should have been strange, but it wasn’t. Traveling to meet old friends and family is so different from other kinds of travel. When the people you’ll see overshadow the place that you’re going to, it isn’t like being in a different place — it’s like blinking into an alternate existence.

We sat and drank coffee and ate bread smeared with blackberry butter. The kid looked nervous and stunning. I ran back and forth from the men’s room, collecting various items and conveying messages. The guys sat calmly on the sofa in their kilts watching Westerns. I ran down to the hotel restaurant for a straw, explaining that my best friend was getting married and already had her lipstick done.

At the ceremony, there were old friends from high school, old friends from Glasgow and faces that went to names I’d been hearing for years, but never seen.

Afterwards, at the reception on the roof terrace at the hotel, the groom gave a speech about how, on his first visit to Texas to meet my friend’s parents, he knocked over a pumpkin (it was Halloween) with his gangly arms, smashing it into big messy pieces, and they apologized to him. And I smiled, because I knew what he was saying, because her parents have always been like that to all of us. We passed the quaich, someone ate three salads, and the dancing began.

Speaking of dancing, who knew the Scottish had so damn many?

I passed most of the reception on the party poopers wall with friends from Glasgow, bantering, catching up on time lost, watching everyone dance and wishing the night didn’t have to end.

At one point, it got a little overwhelming. The dozen or so amaretto sours I’d obtained from the open bar trying to keep pace with the kids may have played a role. My friend’s parents cornered me with hugs, and her mother said, “You girls need to just go on and move back home, now.”

But that isn’t a solution. Because Texas isn’t that anymore. It was, for this one night, but those people flew in from all over the world. Going home doesn’t fix the problem.

I don’t know how to explain how I felt without being melodramatic, but a drunken reunion with long lost friends, laughing and talking and dancing, after watching a couple who have been through it all over the past decade finally make it official — it was melodramatic. It was a night I’ll remember until the day I die, and I used to have those every six months or so, but then life started to get so serious and so permanent, and last minute flights to Europe, or wherever, came to feel more irresponsible than worth it.

When the reception was over, we went down to the bar, and when the bar closed, we went back to the room, and when finally it was just me and the kid left standing, we went out to the veranda as the first shards of morning light began to pierce the skyline. My bus for Dallas was leaving at 10:50 am. I looked at her and said, what are we supposed to do? I’ll see you in another five years, when we’re 35, and then another five, when we’re 40, two or three more times, and then we’ll be too old to take 15-hour flights? What are we supposed to do?

When I got back to my room and climbed into bed to try to get a couple of hours of sleep before the bus ride, I sent a message to B: “I’m ready if you are.” We’re going to take the next few months to really mull it over, but if I had to bet the farm? I’d say Europe by 2017 is looking pretty good.