My little cousin's getting married tomorrow in a beautiful rustic country hill top church just outside of Glasford, Illinois where the sunsets dip deep into the earth and the Casey GasStation serve as the gossip hub of the local county. Matthew...or, as Grandma Beverly used to cackle incessantly while growing Why Matthew Lloyd! Matthew was the single-child of my father's youngest sibling Christine. As a child, Matthew was a precocious four foot tall moppet who was so hyperactive that no legal dose of ritalin could possibly lull his frenzied antics. NO running around with Matthew! Was the parental caveat cast during holidays, which, of course, we never obeyed. There was the Christmas dinner where we somehow cozened Matthew into playing Little Drumer boy, employing his utensils as drumstick's, using Granma's good china for a timpani. The results occured with shattering predictability.
There was also the Easter where we got Matthew to laugh so hard that Milk siphoned out of his nostrils and landed on craggily Aunt Evelyn's schnauzer.
I come from a family richly steeped in the arts and every Thanksgiving the kids would put on a Thanksgiving Play for the adults during football intermissions. Matthew and I (the only boys) were always the devout Pilgrims who cajoled our eldest cousin Amanda into playing the turkey. One Thanksgiving we got in serious parental arrears for using an actual BB gun to hunt our cousin in Aunt Linn's Living room.
Matthew is a musical prodigy and a formidable actor. By the time he was about the size of a fire hydrant he was already mastering Mozart. Like everyone else in my family (with the exception of the bad boy writer) Matthew got a full ride to Illinois Weslyan and he now lives in California studying orchestral conducting. Watch out Peter Shiclky!!!!!
His bride to be is named Robin. She sang at my sister's Beth's wedding a year ago. Her dulcet smile and benevolent nature correlates perfectly with her diaphonous silk voice!
My greatest memory with my cousin happned almost six years ago. It was New Years day and I had spent the night at my girlfriends house. I drove home in a blizzard (almost eight feet of snow) and when I arrived home I immediately called my cousin up. Growing up we would always hike in the woods that buckeld the suburban manors together where my grandma lived. Grandma had died and we just inherited the house. Matthew lived down the court.
We layered our bodies with heaps of down garments and imemdiately fumbled and prounced our limbs across a new earth, caked with immeasurable cloudy-tufts of January white. The snow was so deep and fresh that it served as a mattress; we leaped off fifteen-foot high clifts and landed comfortably in the blanket of snow below. We wrestled and tossed each other and arrived home two hours later thawing out with Bailey's and Starbucks!
Dearest Cousin Thank you for granting me the opportunity to be in your wedding (Thank you for not making me an usher!-Take that Beth!)....May your love for your mate continue to augment and blossom throughout your life and may the beauty you love be what you do.
oh, yeah. and I'm sorry I hit you with the piano bench that one time during Wrestlemania in grandma Bev's living room. I didn't know your head would break it!!!
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