Twenty-Minute Cousin

"Oh," you ask, "How'd you enjoy the Kentucky Derby?"  

I didn't get to see it.  Nope.  Not me.  

"What?"

OK.  I was supposed to be in Manhattan this weekend.  My friend had gotten married in a flash, so he and his new wife still have two apartments there.  I was going to inhabit one of them for five days.  But work has been ripping the bones from my back, and so when Thursday night came and it was time to pack, I was too exhausted.  There was the Swine Flu thing and my own lack of resilience, and as I sat on the couch brooding about the trip and how I was really not wanting to go just then, I thought the heck with it, I'll just put it off.  I called the airlines and told them I had a fever, so they charged me fifty dollars and let me reschedule my flight.  I felt better immediately.  I called my friend, and he said it was OK and probably better because the weather was supposed to suck all weekend.  Oh, yes, I was feeling brilliant.  Flying high.

I had forgotten, however, that my second cousin in a town far away was having his hillbilly wedding on Saturday.  When I told my mother that I was not going to NYC, she was elated.  I could ride with her to the hideous event in the distant town.  There was no way to say no.  

And it was a good thing I went, for my mother's left rear tire blew up on the interstate and she didn't know what to do.  She just kept driving through the hideous vibrations and the flying of steel belted rubber until I could get through to her that she needed to stop the car.  

She was really shaken up.  

And so I, who am not much of a tool and worker fellow, went to her trunk to get the jack to change her tire as if I knew what I was doing.  And indeed, there must be some redneck gene that is activated in times like those, for in five minutes without getting a dab of dirt or grease on my clothing, I had it all done.  Bigger and stronger and more manly than I had been, I slid behind the wheel of my mother's Camry and headed toward the distant misery.  

The miseries were many.  It was a flawless day, a day made for being outside and not in a church and the low-ceilinged, dimly-lit reception room of a poor hotel on the main drag between two two small towns to watch a second cousin I see maybe twenty minutes a year get married to a girl he has lived with for four years who I have barely even met.  

But it made my mother happy.  

I took my camera to record the thing because my cousin asked me to and because I hoped to find some terrible truth in all of it.  But the terrible truth is that the modern hillbilly removed from the holler for a generation has improved enough to make him even less visually interesting than he was before though not quite normal.  

The bride's and the groom's families were both present in number though there was little mixing between the two since the bride's truck-driving father was not in favor of his daughter marrying someone who has spent the last year collecting unemployment while living in his grandmother's house with his fiance and best friend, grandma encamped in the small mother-in-law apartment that was once the carport.  

Unfortunately, you can't photograph conversations.  At least, I couldn't.  

And so while you all were watching the Kentucky Derby in some swell place wearing bonnets and drinking champagne, I was on the interstate listening to my mother complain about my driving on her spare tire.  

Home at sunset, there was nothing to do but go for sushi on the veranda of the usual place and then go home to lie on the floor waiting for a normal sleepiness to replace the jittery fatigue of the day.  

Here is a photo from yesterday, a little girl and her sister blowing bubbles as the bride and groom head for the limo.  Kids.  They are the one beautiful constant no matter where you go.