Saturday

Saturday morning came with an unfamiliar stillness. I found myself in my room, Myla pressed up against me still sleeping. My bedroom was colder than usual, but this seems to be determined more by the air just outside my window than any setting I put on the thermostat.

I rolled over to find a stack of pillows laying next to me; a barricade protecting me from the window light. Quite different than previous Saturday mornings where I’d see you in bed, still sleeping, though admittedly just as still, just as silent as my stack of pillows.

Two things ran through my head as I lay there, staring at the ceiling, twirling Myla’s fur between my fingers… the first thought was of your morning compared to mine, out at sea, experiencing your first cruise on a much deserved vacation. Had you slept as well as I had? Were you excited? Does Alex snore? Was your room too hot? Did your sheets feel cheap and scratchy or soft and luxurious?

I started to make a note in my phone of things to ask you when you got back.

The second thought, quickly followed by the first, was of the rehearsal dinner that evening. My younger cousin Max would be getting married the next day to his fiancé Kate (whom it is universally agreed is a treasure), and I’d be lying if I were to tell you that I wasn’t feeling a bit nervous– though probably not for the reasons you may suspect.

See, Max had called me a few weeks previously to ask if I could be a last minute usher for his wedding, to which I immediately (and obviously) agreed to with as much external enthusiasm as I could show, because after all, weddings are special, right? And they need to go as according to plan as possible right? And this wedding already had an usher that apparently wasn’t working out for Max due to unknown reasons, so I most certainly needed to help remedy this deviation from the plan that was his wedding– after all, we’re family.

But here’s the internal hesitancy, the nervousness that was running through my head on this Saturday morning… Ambiguity.