In an essay titled “Eclipse” Annie Dillard writes about a painting she regrets to have seen: “It was an image of the sort which you do not intend to look at, and which, alas, you never forget. Some tasteless fate presses it upon you; it becomes part of the complex interior junk you carry with you wherever you go.” It’s the “complex interior junk” I want to talk about, and for me, it’s not a painting, it’s this adolescent event that forms a memory that simply won't go away.
When I was 15 or 16 and my organ teacher asked me to be a part of her bridal party as train bearer. We weren't related, but we’d developed some kind of friendship over the course of a few years of organ lessons and I would spy the dark-haired guy who would wait for her after my lessons. They were to be married in the spring and after that wedding she was no longer to be my teacher and the teacher who replaced her, I decided in advance, would not be my friend because I was through with caring for the intricacies of student-teacher friendships and so I stayed distant and didn’t make excuses for not practicing the organ.
Being in a bridal party felt like a momentous honour and I was totally unable to put things into any perspective at the time. I thought I was her favourite student, but she'd also invited another of her students to be a train-bearer. Although I had no train-bearing experience and was a teenager with teenage clumsiness and occasionally stepped on the underskirts that poofed out her bridal dress, I was determined to be the better train bearer of the two. I also hoped I was the prettier train bearer even though my mom didn’t allow me to participate in the pre-wedding bridal activities like the visit to the hair salon or the spa for manicures. Instead, mom, with every good intention and some desire to allow me to participate, painted my nails pink and curled my hair. My hair went limp by the end of the ceremony and looked like a cat had draped its tail across my forehead no matter how much I tried primping it back into place, out of my face. It was not for nothing that my mom had given me the nickname “fluffy” at home.
The bridal party wore emerald-green dresses made out of sateen material. There were pictures taken on the university grounds and the elm trees we posed under were besieged that year with worms. One of the bridesmaids kept going on about the worms and I thought she was silly, so I made the kind of joke, I realize now, that my dad would have made. I said “Oh look! There's one on your shoulder!” But I was too naive to understand that her silliness was an actual phobia, and my desire to lighten the mood had the exact opposite effect: I made her cry. I hadn’t rushed to say it was a joke but because everyone reacted so dramatically I immediately realized my mistake. When they couldn’t find the worm, I eked out a lame, half-devastated, “It was a joke…”
It is well-understood at weddings that mothers can cry, but people in the bridal party should not be brought to tears on a day entirely immortalized in pictures, for which people are hired to apply makeup professionally. I understood then that there was no chance I would be the best train-bearer. The groom even shot me a severe look.
I think it was after the pictures that we trooped into an A&W for a snack, and my spirits revived a little at the commotion we caused. At the reception, I had no place at the bridal table, I wasn't friends with the other organ student, and in fact, I knew no one but the bride. Eventually I called my dad and said goodbye to the bride and left the room and waited for him to deliver me from the whole day.
Although I feel a great amount of shame about that day, I also have pity for that 15-year-old girl who knew so little of the world. Sometimes the shame is stronger though, and as a defense, I wonder what that bride was thinking to have asked me to be one of two train-bearers.