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© St. Petersburg Times, published October 5, 2001
Some people aren't good on boats.
But things happen on boats, like the wedding of one's closest friend, who considers an 80-foot schooner the ideal setting for a day to remember.
So on the boat you go. And on the boat I went, dressed in a 1980s cocktail dress.
Choosing the wrong fashion decade for a Gatsby-themed affair turned out to be the least of my problems. I accepted a small speaking role, happy to oblige. I promised to make sure the bride didn't fight with her mother.
I did not agree to hide my feelings about boats. They're just not for everyone.
Nor did I promise not to organize a betting pool, predicting how many of the 40-odd guests would fare badly on the boat. A few similarly perverse souls went along and, over Linda's horrified objections, we promised to post the winner on the wedding Web site.
A gambler among us predicted a woman in a bright red dress would be "the first to go." Others, from the big insurance company where Linda works, chose numerical guesses. The best actuarial minds in corporate America could not top Linda's 20-year-old daughter for accuracy.
But we wouldn't know that until later.
The weather was teasingly balmy, the skies deceptively clear. We found our sea legs, greeted the families.
For a while everybody handled the voyage out to sea just fine.
The bride and groom assembled near the minister. And that's when Linda's 12-year-old niece discovered just how she felt about boats.
"I can't stand the waves," she screamed. Between the motorboats in the channel and the waves crashing on the jetty, it was, indeed, a choppy patch of water.
"Make it stop!" she shrieked, scampering unsuccessfully in platform shoes as relatives rushed to comfort her.
Amazingly, Amy did not do badly. She was frightened, that's all.
I, however, was aware of the relentless pounding of brain against skull as the minister preached about the pitching and turbulence of marriage.
I read my part from the Ketubah, the Jewish marriage contract.
Then I observed that the woman in red was truly not doing well. The gambler flashed me a thumbs-up sign. "I'm taking you to Vegas," I answered him.
Then a slender woman in black -- an executive, or maybe an executive's wife -- did not do well.
I was third. Three times, to be exact. As luck would have it I was sitting near the minister. "Oh, God," I kept saying, then "I'm sorry" for her benefit, until I realized she, too, was struggling to keep her ministerial composure.
The bride and groom did beautifully.
Their love -- a mad, delirious, at-long-last-I-found you kind of passion -- seemed to buffer them, like a magic potion that made them resplendent in their off-white costumes. They clinked their champagne glasses against a backdrop of 1920s music as the ocean tossed us this way and that, oblivious to this scene more Coen brothers than F. Scott Fitzgerald. You could see in their embrace the very meeting of two souls and a promise of joy that held no room for cynicism.
"She's an angel," one guest aptly observed of the bride. Endlessly devoted to family, friends and this new marriage. Good on boats? Ask the relatives she has rescued time and again from chaos. That family has seen storms to rival any George Clooney movie. Yet after each one, Linda would pick her head up first and say, "Calm down. This is what we'll do. Don't worry. I'll take care of it."
And so we indulged her fantasy.
We learned at the dock that someone had lost a hat. The red-dressed woman had lost a necklace. I had a migraine and was lying, face-down in my early Madonna dress, on a wooden bench. Departing guests fired off their last pictures. One muttered, "serves you right for starting that pool." True, I told the bench. But she didn't fight with her mother.
Later we laughed -- the hatless woman, even the 12-year-old. We got a great story. We witnessed a love stronger than the sea itself.
And we all can't wait for the Web site.