A Milk-and-Honey Wedding

NAPERVILLE, Ill. – “This land responds to good treatment,” goes the line from a Wendell Berry poem. And so do sons, so do daughters. Good treatment is sort of contagious, though you don’t want to make a habit of it, obviously.

In photos from a recent wedding, I noticed that neither Smartacus nor I could cinch a necktie. I taught him how, and I don’t do it well myself, really. This is exactly how family dysfunction is passed down, one generation to the next.

Honestly, Smartacus and I look like characters in a Cheever novel, racing to catch the late train to Connecticut after some poor and impulsive decisions.

And that’s how we looked before the wedding!

Love is in the air – again. It’s like a positive pandemic, this decade’s budding romanticism.

Perhaps I read The Atlantic too often, but I’m sensing that this fresh humanism, this romanticism, is a reaction to the isolating pressures of technology. Same thing happened in the 1920s, of course, after the Industrial Revolution.

Isn’t that interesting? No? Sorry.  If you think that’s interesting, you’re probably an old coot like me, who lives for weddings, deli food and late-night games of cribbage.

Look, I’m partial to places that have fallen by the wayside: California and the Middle West. I find them both to be resplendent, yet the East Coast media still sneer at us, or at the very least hold us in unveiled contempt.

Truth is, we’re laughing back.

I’m also partial to places that get walloped by the weather. So, Smartacus and I have found ourselves in Naperville, Ill., set on lush land scraped pure and flat by three ice ages.

Remarkably, this western Chicago suburb is one of the most up-and-coming cities in America. Wins all sorts of awards for livability (3 bedrooms, one-acre lot, $440k). Bob Odenkirk grew up here, as did Candace Parker and  “Jeopardy” James Holzhauer.

Naperville is what American towns looked like before Walmart and Amazon ripped their guts out. Weathered brick, cozy bookstores, free and plentiful parking. I don’t know exactly how Naperville has pulled off this miracle, but it is a remarkable place, with vast parks set along a Huckleberry river.

Obviously, this land responds to good treatment.

“That’s the Nile,” I tell Smartacus of the gently rolling river.

“It is?”

 “The Nile of the Heartland.”

These Candygrams to the Midwest must seem relentless. Every summer, I wallow in a Norman Rockwell bubble of sentiment and cheese shops. If you cut me open, you’d find a bunch of brats — mostly pork, some veal.

To get me back to the Middle West doesn’t take much. You mostly have to say, “Hey you, come here,” and I’m hopping the next freight train out of town.

This time, we’re at my nephew’s wedding. Johnny is marrying Alexa, something that seemed like fate. Alexa was a soccer teammate of Johnny’s sister, Carrie.  Alexa is one of those pint-sized Alphas that light up a soccer field, and a bar room, and a wonderful life.

It’s like a great Beatles chord progression. One moment, she is all you can think about; the next, you’re married.

This wedding has all that, plus good grub, plus 250 tanned and happy guests reaching for their gin and tonics.

Plus some wonderful speeches, led by my sister Holly, who toasts her son (the groom) with: “Johnny, I cut the cord with you 31 years ago. And tonight we do it again…”

Praise the lord and pass the Kleenex ….

Oooooh summer. Mothers and sons, brides and grooms, lazy rivers. Love. That’s the baseline ingredient here, love.

Ick, right? But it happens! 

And it is happening here  — quite gloriously, in fact — on an old dairy farm where they now stage storybook weddings. The lovely and patient older daughter is also here, draped in her summer hair, along with her handsome sidekick, Finn.

And out on the dance floor, mayhem. One young lass is dancing like an exploding bottle of Champagne. She is everything Newton described: action-reaction, particle dynamics. At one point, she pops a handstand, then gators to the floor, flashing a bit of birthday suit.

“Do you remember…the 21^st night of September…”

By the way, do you know where the term “honeymoon” stems from? It is linked to the full moons of mid-summer, when the hives are overflowing. Some 4,000 years ago, ancients fermented this plentiful honey to make mead, among the very first wines.

So, a honeymoon is more than a celebration of lust and lingerie. It’s William Shakespeare, William Blake, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen. It’s frilly dresses, happy tears, and silky canoe trips across moonlit bays.

This time of year, we’re all kind of honeymooning, right?

Sip the moonglow. Pass me that honey wine.

Next week: It’s a girl!!!