I can only attribute it to wedding brain or, perhaps, the sad story of the lost memory. The last few weeks running up to my daughter’s wedding were borderline insane — the details, followed by more details, checks and rechecks, lists made and lost. This event somehow took over my waking days and sleepless nights, touched by nightmares about the sudden change of venue, number of people and costs. So much so that my life — my real life — started to fade into the background — not great when you have other things going on in your day-to-day, even some work you need to pay attention to. You might say that is a usual occurrence when your daughter is about to be wed, but for me it was bizarre. Is “wedding brain” a sign of early onset dementia? Has anyone ever heard of that? Don’t google the symptoms, you will be sorry you did.
My old friend from the U.K. sent a beautifully wrapped parcel and told me to open it with my daughter on the occasion of my birthday and her birthday, which was two days prior. Easy to do, no? We were going out for a nice lunch at the time and both of us opened our pretty packages concurrently. Thereafter my mind drew a blank as to what I had done with said treasured piece (a gold and amber paw on a gold chain, my daughter’s was silver). We went and had a facial after our lunch, visited a bar in Paso and then drove home. For a while, I was oblivious.
“Did you happen to pick up my present in addition to your own?” I asked my daughter, hopefully, once I was home and said treasure was not to be found in the nether regions of my bag. The answer was a negative one. Oh, for crying out loud, where had I put it? I looked in the truck, under the seats of the truck, called the restaurant, my daughter called the other places. Bag got turned out again. Not an amber paw in sight. I must have dropped it somewhere in my carelessness. How devastating. I wondered if I could find one exactly the same on Etsy. Oh, dear me.
My daughter-in-law had a beautiful chain with a gold and sapphire heart, which had been given to her mother by her grandfather. Her mother had then given it to her. She cossetted that thing. We found the heart in the driveway after they drove away. “Did you lose your heart?” I asked her, proudly shooting over a photo of it. She went on to tell me how much the item meant to her, how she felt as if it had eternally disappeared when she got home and there was just a broken chain around her neck. “We’ll bring it to you when we come,” I reply, a bit triumphant. If I couldn’t find my own special chain, I would be able to offer up someone else’s to the universe as a peace offering. I’m always looking for reasons to clear my slate.
Husband and I were running errands. Now where did I put that special heart? I went through my bag and other clever spots where I hide things — from myself apparently. There was no sign of the beloved heart.
“ARE YOU KIDDING ME RIGHT NOW?” I yell at my stupid self as we arrive home on the search for the lost, found and re-lost gold and sapphire heart. Why did I tell her I had found it, when I had only half found it; it had not been completely returned safely to her. Husband looked at me with concern. I realized I must have lost it after photographing said item — prematurely triumphant — and then leaping out of the truck to get something else I had forgotten in the house — again, wedding brain on steroids. We explored the driveway and there it was in the crack of the cement. I had leaped out of the truck and dropped the dang thing again, right after we found it. I could not believe I had done that.
Not planning on telling my daughter-in-law that I was severely losing my mind, which was sorely apparent at this point in the proceedings, husband did it for me. Once I proudly presented her with the beautiful keepsake in a nice box on a gorgeous solid gold chain that had been given to me 30 years ago or so from my mother, he added in the additional, unnecessary — I might add — details. “Ohhhh, so you found it and lost it again? Then found it?” she chuckled. Yes, I did just that. Thank you, husband.
After I had slept for about a week near non-stop and gone through detox for the wedding-rama that was my life for many months, things started to go a little more smoothly for me.
On performing an unusually big clear out of my jewelry stash, I came across a small gold and amber paw on a chain. It had been hanging out with my jewelry all along. Scary though I had no memory of putting it there, I was so delighted to find said lost — now found — item and know that I had not just left it in the lost luggage at the back of my brain or at the gas station when I pumped my gas. I still have no recollection of how it walked out of my bag and found its way to the jewelry pile, but we will just have to leave it at that.
Strange things happen when you have wedding brain. Though I clutched a list of the proposed wedding agenda throughout the whole wedding day, the wedding dogs never made it down the aisle. How did that not happen? The delicious custom cake appeared as a frozen ice cream cake, since no one informed us that a cake must be “tempered” an hour before serving — who knew — and the bride and groom only got a slice of the icing in any case. There were definitely cake thieves afoot that day in addition to the cheeky families that decided to invite additional folk just for the heck of it. Price per head and who’s counting?
I’m hoping in the coming months that I will be able to inform you, my trusted readers, that I am actually just fine and my memory is well-oiled and back to its usual semi-perfect self. Though I may never know what happened when I developed the wedding brain, I am very relieved to inform you that I only have one daughter, the two boys are both married, and I shall very much enjoy attending the wedding of one of your nearest and dearest in the coming months and years, where I won’t need a wedding agenda and you can figure out your own dogs, cake and visitor log.
