Angels on the Lane

Monday August 20th, 2001 @ 8:52 PM

Filed under: Everything, Tales Told Well

I sensed the vision before I saw it. I turned and looked down the long sidewalk and beheld what looked like three glorious angels shimmering white in beatific splendor. Statuesque they were, and poised like figurines on a transparent ledge. After a short gasp, I yelled at a nearby photographer, and pointed at the vision. He responded by falling over his camera bag, gathering himself in an ungainly fashion, combing his mop of red hair, racing to a table where he kept his film, cramming the film into one of his cameras, then running down the sidewalk to get a closeup–which is exactly the opposite of what he should have done. The beauty was in the distant image down the lane, under the trees, which in turn were under the summer sky. Only far away would the figures appear so angelic and isolated and singular. It didn’t matter anyway, by the time he took an actual photograph the scene had vanished.

Three sisters began to move down the sidewalk to their destination before the preacher, who waited in a giant tent before five hundred people, and the three young men who would marry them. How often does one witness a wedding of three sisters at one time? Tall and elegant ones whose only rivals for beauty were each other? The flowing gowns gave the illusion of gliding as they slowly descended the steps above and behind the tent. Jason “12 fingers” Coomes played classical music on his guitar and one thousand eyes turned to behold the grand and glorious entry of the three lovely sisters.

Not strange eyes, but the familiar eyes of mothers, fathers, brothers, grandmothers, grandfathers, cousins, aunts and uncles, friends and co-workers, and dear acquaintances of every variety. Almost every eye held a tear, every throat a lump, every heart a tremor. Men and women bit their lips and smiled alternately as the mood changed with every step. Many had known these sisters from infancy and memories flowed through people’s minds in kaleidoscopic delight.

Blinddog Smokin’, as a rule, will not play weddings. But the opportunity to play at such a rare and special event broke our rule. Because of the strange and varied attendees, a band can’t seem to please anyone. The old people want quiet waltzes, and the young people want punk and grunge and hip-hop. The rednecks want country and the white-collars want elevator music. The ten year olds want rap with lyrics like, “I’m gonna take an ax and kill the bitch, that’ll teach her…” I’m not kidding. Add to all this, the favorite uncles and family friends who think they can barge onstage in the middle of any song to make a drunken toast, or sing their version of “Good night Irene…” and you have the musician’s nightmare.

I would not have contracted to play this wedding, despite the singularity, except for my special affinity with the father of the three brides. Being the observer I am, sometimes I seem to rise above a scene and view it from the vantagepoint of a drifting bird on the quiet draft of rising air. I seem to hang there in overview. This is my special gift and always has been, to remove myself in mind’s eye, to intensely observe and learn. So it was this day as I seemed to be watching the father from on high.

He stood tall like a Marine in dress blues. His tuxedo, starch-stiff like his backbone. I could feel the love in his heart as he watched his son bring each sister down the steps outside the tent to his position at the entry.

Love is such a trite and misappropriated and ill-defined word anymore. I hear junior high kids dating for the second time saying “I love you,” to one another. The love this father felt for his daughters was so beautifully honed, so intensely focused, so layered and textured through the years, and acutely tied to his great role in life. These lovely creatures, he had held in his arms as helpless babes, who looked up at him in awe and wonder. He had felt the fierce duty to protect them forever with his life and strength. He had known that to neglect them was a sin beyond reclamation. He had gazed at their tiny perfect bodies in praise to God, watching their miniature fingers bend and grasp for the first time.

He had known a time when the sisters had believed in him with all their hearts. If he said it was going to rain, then it was going to rain. If he didn’t like someone, they didn’t either. He was their hero and their protector and their provider and their source of knowledge. No one on earth could stand in his place. He was their daddy.

He had carried them on his back and umpired their softball games and sat by the pool at their swimming lessons. He had to deal with teaching them about the facts of life and coached them through the trauma of growing breasts. One of them had become lost at two years old in a clothing store. He had been convinced she was kidnapped. Frantically he ran through the parking lot, his heart pounding, visions of finding the perpetrator and beating him into the pavement fought for room in his mad thoughts with the ecstasy of hugging his daughter once again. When she showed up playing house inside a ring of dresses, he almost fell to the ground in relief and love.

As he walked each one down the long aisle of grass, his heart burst in mixed emotions. He was so proud, yet feeling so guilty for all the things he didn’t do and the times he was gone, and the sorrow he had caused by his own problems, and the breakup with their mother. He longed in remorse that he could have been perfect for them. He hated himself, yet his heart poured love into the atmosphere like warm rain on a summer eve. The mind works unbelievably fast at such times–precision and rapidity of thought is amazing. The thoughts are tempered and stirred by erupting emotion, while the face carries out its lifetime of training to remain placid and cool.

Then it finally hits the father straight in the teeth when he looks up at his new son-in-law, or in this case–sons. They stand eager to relieve him of his duty as protector. Their eyes are filled with a different kind of love. The meaning and symbolism of the whole ceremony suddenly comes to fruition in the father’s mind. “I am relieved of my duty. This other man is the new protector. She will leave me and live with this man and be his mate and go where he goes. If he is weak, she will suffer. Oh God that he be strong…” The emotion becomes one of fear for his daughter, then hope fights for a position, then joy enters in. It is enough combined force to fell a tree. For perhaps the first time the father truly examines the young man before him and wonders, almost with a sense of panic: “How can this sapling do my job? How truly deep is his commitment and dedication? What is to become of my daughter?”

Then suddenly the preacher is preaching and the daughters who held so tightly to his arm coming down the aisle are now gazing intently into the eyes of their men. And it is over. People cheer. The celebration begins. Hands are being shook. Laughter is erupting. The dancing will commence. The father, however, is feeling a draining of some part of his being. It is the stripping of a duty that he has had his entire adult life. The role is over. The curtain has fallen. It is as though the heart of his vitality and purpose has been torn out of his chest.

While the party rages and builds, the father must reconstruct himself. Who is he now? He wonders about the hundred ways he could have done better. He fights the remorse and the need to feel sorry for himself. Regret and self-chastisement only hurt and breed more hurt. He must lift his head and find his new role. He must think of the positives. He must sublimate his turmoil of emotions into new energy and direction. He must share the joy with his daughters and feel their hope and exhilaration.

A child grown and mature is a mirror. In it a parent can clearly see who he was during the child’s lifetime. If there is distance, there is a reason for it. If there is a bond, there is a reason for that as well. The child-rearing seeds have born their fruit. You cannot undo what was sown. Every hour well spent with them is somehow a piece of fruit in their modern lives. Every tragic mistake is a mark somewhere in their personality or personal relationship with the parent. It is cause and effect. Or so say I from my perch in the sky as I watch this curious event of three married sisters.

I travel about this world more than 99.999 percent of all human beings. I see life from so many angles, some wondrous, some banal, some ugly. I store my knowledge and strive to turn it into wisdom. When you compare so many lives and places and times like I am able, one forms a private mythology and draws from its lessons to survive, grow, and contribute.

The vision of those three angels shimmering in the shadows of fluttering leaves and sunshine dropping through the branches to bless them in radiance, has taken its place in my mythology. The vision will become more glorious as time passes–ethereal and mystical. It represents a gift that a man gave to the world. A gift of his daughters who he loved and labored to shape as a sculpture beholds his clay and strives to bring out the beauty and art and ecstasy.

He gives them to the world to make their mark, that the world be a better place in their passing. He then watches from afar as these little girls who were once his primary reason for being, discover life for themselves and go on to nurture their own children and follow their muses as they write their stories in the ink of tears and laughter.

But unbeknown to them at this time, he, the father, is still their greatest champion. For if the world turns against them, and even the one to whom he gave them in matrimony, turns as well, and would hurt them or hate them, he will be there waiting. His love is a great tempered sword of steel and cannot be broken or bent–it is Excaliber and as pure as the quest for the Grail. He will come, he will always come. Only death can stay his rescue, but it cannot remove his will.

Blinddog Smokin’ has played some rare and special gigs, but that night will never be forgotten, for these, as you have probably already guessed, were my own beloved daughters, and the vision is mine forever.

Carl

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