Some Guy Says

The Wedding of the Season

Ever since I got back from Norway in August, I’ve been turning over the stories I want to tell you about the wedding that took me there.

But then...you know how it goes...one thing and another...life’s sorrows and challenges.

Time.

So.

It’s been a minute, but I do want you to know about “the wedding of the season.”

That’s what Bobby’s daughter, Mallory, calls it. And I suppose that, on an island with only 700 year-round residents, a wedding with more than 60 guests is a Really Big Deal.

And, as has already been reported here, to have been invited to officiate my best friend’s wedding to his best girl is the honor of my lifetime.

So?

How could I have been so clumsy as to have left my computer — the computer with all my wedding notes, this very computer upon which I am banging out this post right this second — behind?

I ask you...!

AARRGGHH!

In my defense, the deal was sealed late in the day so whatever I had put together on the computer wasn’t really what I would call “cooked” anyway. Once I confirmed and made my peace with the computer’s safe location, I got freed up!

Here’s how it all worked out.

First off – and I think I may have told you – Bobby has been my best friend for more than 40 years. We’ve been up and around life’s curve balls and driven miles and miles on all kinds of adventures and to the tune of — and in search of — so much music!

Also…I’ve known this guy for so long that a lot of people know him as Little Bobby. Among the delights of my life have been those moments with Bob in conversation with someone else only to hear the other person suddenly exclaim, “Oh! You’re Little Bobby!”

At well over six feet tall, Bob carries the mantle of Little Bobby with elegance and grace and cheer. And truth to tell, while we still say Little Bobby in our very close circle, you don’t hear it so much elsewise anymore which makes it all the sweeter when you do!

Secondly — The road to Sonja wasn’t particularly easy or smooth or immediate. Sonja remembers meeting Bobby at a party at Geir’s house when she was a young woman. I get the feeling she may have been smitten then! He remembers her from another party at Geir’s on Kilsund some years later.

So it is a kind of metaphor that Kilsund, Sonja’s hometown, is not a place where you just, you know, show up. It is a hero’s journey of mountains and waters and trees and vast empty spaces to negotiate with buses and cars and boats and people to get there, and all of it is distinctly – and blissfully – not American!

The locale — like the event and the attending party — is something you have to be really intentional about getting to. So it became even more ironic that I showed up without plans, maps, or much of anything in place to guide what was going to happen.

I think it’s fair to say that this kind of thing happens, in my life anyway, more often than not.

After a day and a half of traveling, I was lucky to have been found — well, that’s how it felt — by Eli, Sonja’s sister-in-law, at a remote way-station about an hour from Kilsund. Eli and I hit it off immediately and cheerfully. It wasn’t long before we were engaged in bright conversation about our worlds, our lives and loves, our expectations and aspirations for the wedding, the weekend, more.

Magne, Sonja’s brother, and Eli were my hosts...and you could not have asked for better. There was construction in progress at their place to join two separate houses together as one home.

Another metaphor? Perhaps.

Whatever else, it certainly meant that I had my own wing — bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, and terrace — to hide out in.

The view from “my” terrace.

Hiding out, for me, is important. See, I always-always test out as an INFJ on the Myers-Briggs Personality Test. No one believes this: “You? Introverted?” Yes! Don’t just take it from me; click on the link and check it out — especially number 6!

This is important information because Bobby was excited about his achievement of securing Eli and Magne as my hosts and their house as my safe space. Big Score! But I wasn’t so sure about a three-day party with people I didn’t know and whose language I might not be able to speak and with no escape plan like when you have your own car and you can just bow out and disappear.

Oh Lord! I hope my neuroses didn’t make me burdensome! I like to think of myself as (as has been said) a “fucking delight,” but…but I also know that (as has also been said) a “little bit can go a mighty long way!”

In the end, it just didn’t matter as they were all — Sonja, Eli, Magne, Geir, Bobby and his kids, the French families, the Norwegian friends, everyone I met and shared time with — delightful, charming, caring, and fun.

And plus besides which, as anyone who knows me at all will tell you, all my friends are pretty and smart. In Kilsund, there are a lot of pretty and smart people to be friends with! There was a group of ladies — The Happy Ladies of Oslo — who got us moving to “Dancing Queen.” Ohmigosh — So Fun!

On the morning of the wedding, Bobby and Sonja treated the wedding party – all 60 of us (I want to say we were, like, 4 Americans, 10 French people, and 45 Norwegians) — to a marvelous boat tour — a three hour tour! — of the area where the Oslo Fjord meets the Black Sea near and around Kristiansand.

It was a spectacular day. The quality of the light was just exactly what I remember from having lived in Oslo as a kid between 1964 and 1968. There is nothing like it – clear and crisp and even and bright. Perhaps it was that light, or maybe it was the exuberance of being with so many happy Europeans...whatever it was...I suddenly came into possession of another memory — a song we used to sing as a child’s game:

Ta den ring og la den vandre

Fra den ene til den andre

Ringen er skjult, den sees ei.

Nettopp nå er ringen hos deg

Loosely translated: take this ring and let it wander, from one person to another…until it winds up with someone.

You see where this is going, right?

The gist of the game is to pick the right person with the ring.

Right?.

It occurred to me in that moment that that song could be appropriate — maybe even very appropriate — for this wedding.

Next year I will be 70. How have these words lived inside me all this time? How does it happen that I would remember every word, the tune, all of it? I practiced for Magne and Eli — they even approved my accent!

More importantly, how did I manifest the presence of mind to pull this up out of whatever memory bank it was lodged in?

I tell you what…more and more and more I imagine my brain to be the Museum of Flapdoodle — there is a whole lot of stuff up in there, and precious little of it seems useful to me…until…all of a sudden, it is!

All of which is to say, I determined to sing Ta Den Ring.

Amazingly, many (most? all?) of the Norwegians joined in when I started the song — some a little teary — and it became one of the sweetest moments in a late afternoon of nothing but sweet moments.

But wait, there’s more —

Earlier, I asked Bobby and Sonja if there were any other plans for music. I thought it might be good to have a song that everyone could sing together like “I Will” by the Beatles. Bobby and Sonja settled on “Handle Me with Care” by the Traveling Wilburys.

About two hours before the gathering, Bob called me up. I guess he had assumed that he would need to play the guitar and lead the singing, but/and, as with any properly appointed groom, he was nervous.

I get it.

“Bob, don’t worry about it. All you gotta do is show up, say ‘I do,’ kiss the bride, and: Boom-Done!”

What he didn’t know was that his daughter Mallory, who I think must have held the travel record having come from New Mexico, would lead us in the song!

That was a big and wonderful surprise for Bobby and Sonja, and another impossibly sweet and teary moment for the rest of us.

How luscious! And it was something for us — disparate people from all over — to do together. The singing and laughing together in different languages was clumsy and vulnerable and sweet as pie.

This has become more and more and more important to me lately — this doing of things together. And if it’s singing and laughing and breaking bread and cheering Love, so much the better.

For the weddings I’ve officiated lately, there comes a moment — generally after the vows and before the kiss — when I ask the wedding guests to take a vow, too. In this case, it went like this:

Do you promise, from this day forward, to encourage Sonja and Bobby as married partners, to love them, to give them your guidance when it is sought, and to support each of them to be steadfast in the promises they have made here today? If you do…then make a whole lot of noise!

As you might imagine…a Mighty Noise was made!

Sonja, in her gold sheath dress was stunning. She looked every inch the goddess I believe her to be: radiant, cheerful, bright!

Little Bobby looked pretty good, too!

The day was absolutely glorious. It extended well into a night-time that never seemed really to come —

…from Bobby and Sonja’s house…just before midnight on their wedding day

I think we are good and lucky to have sweet weddings, old friends, cheery holidays especially in hard times.

The journey there and back, as I reported earlier, was Just The Worst. But the being there — the being present — was worth every trial. It was a culmination of finding some joy just when the world has become so dark and you feel so old that you think you might just be past it all.

As we barrel into these holidays, I’m grateful for the memories of the Norwegian summer to warm my brittle little heart on this crispy cold day in the mountains of Western North Carolina. I’m grateful for the love between Sonja and Little Bobby and the Wedding of the Season that brought us all together.

And look! Now you’re in on the story, too, as I am surely grateful for you.

Merry and Bright —

Some Guy Says is written by Robert Arleigh White and distributed via Substack twice a month — give or take — and benefits mightily from the editorial support provided by Canetha Dodd.

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