XLIII. wedding bells

on the body in time

I caught myself in the mirror the other day and thought that I definitely look closer to thirty than twenty. I was surprised at how good I felt about that, how good and right my reflection appeared, how proud I was to see my own continuation. I’ve been off Instagram now since April. I take a lot fewer pictures of myself. I text them to my friend who goes to Berkeley Law and my grandma; they send pictures back: Claire in her new apartment, Mamaw in her garden, marking time together. Because I haven’t been scrolling through other people’s bodies, I’ve had the space to pay more attention to mine.

Things crack in the morning. It feels good. I stretch and everything snaps into place. Ironically I noticed it started happening as I got more consistent with yoga. Almost as if my natural state is more actively stretched out, muscles sprung to attention rather than the relaxed contraction of sleep; I feel longer. Anyway, I crack now in the morning and I’m aware that I didn’t used to crack. It is a difficult thing, to talk about the body aging because it seems reserved for when that aging is bad—when things start to hurt, when activities become barred—so anything before that doesn’t seem to count. You’re supposed to just enjoy the 20-something body, don’t think about it, it’ll soon disappear. But sometimes that feels like the equivalent of telling a twelve-year-old not to talk about puberty because one day they’ll go through menopause.

I am grateful for the body I am in. It feels, on most days, vital and responsive and strong—young I suppose—but it is also changing, more than I can recall since I was seventeen and it was suddenly blooming and bursting and being noticed. It is whipping up some violent periods. It demands movement or feels stagnant. It is calling for hours and hours and hours of sleep yet wants to be up early. It is not processing alcohol well. It might soon require a dedicated vitamin and supplement routine. The body is keeping the score, but she didn’t use to; the body used to just be rubber, bouncing off the world without any permanent marks.

mr. & mrs. daves

My best friend got married this weekend. It is the first and likely only wedding for which I will be the Maid of Honor. In my speech I wrote about what has changed—we’ve been friends for twenty years—I used to be so much shorter than Katelyn. She stood about a head taller than me, but in my memory I am the one dragging her around. I can imagine I might have been an imperial child. Katelyn was always popular because she was kind, boys liked her, she played basketball; I don’t have a strong sense of how she feels about middle school, she might be one of those strange people that look back on it fondly. Katelyn and Ryan’s home suits them—it’s soft and plush, clean and open, a perfect space for gathering, a house for a family. Both of the baby names they picked out are adorable. This is a very different kind of life. Yet, in all of the new, my friend is recognizable to me. We are still seven and eleven and nineteen together.

mia and katelyn on their way to the club

I was going to write my speech here (it went over well thank god) but I thought maybe something like that is best in its time and place. But I do want to write this passage that stuck in my mind when I read it and formed the foundation of the speech. Apologies to all I have sent this to, I really love it:

You are in a room or apartment you think is fine, then you walk through a door and close it behind you and you find yourself in the next apartment, which is even better, larger, more floorspace, a better view. You’re happy there and then you go into the next apartment and close the door and this one is even better. And the sequence continues, but with the odd feature that although this has happened to you a number of times, you forget: each time your new quarters are manifestly better and each time its breathtaking, a surprise, something you’ve done nothing to deserve or make happen. You never intend to go from one room onward to the next—it just happens. You notice a door, you go through, and you’re delighted again.

xx

Mia