Love

Well, it has been a while since I’ve written much of anything in a public forum. Even my letters to family and friends have been sparse and intermittent as of late. The other day, I posted to LiveJournal for the first time in nearly a year, and realized just how much has happened in the last year, and just how hard it is to briefly summarize such an eventful time period. In fact, it took me roughly an hour to write a few paragraphs in the form of a wedding announcement, just because I had no idea how to even start with what easily could’ve turned into a novel.

So, I suppose I’ll start with some recent news, and try to get into the habit of writing more in general. I really do want to tell the abundance of beautiful stories and happy memories Rio & I share, but it gets kind of exhausting with the sheer volume of how many there are to write about..

So, I’ll write about the last few days for now.

Sunday marked my last day of vacation before returning to Dreamhost. I had been off from work since the 15th, which is the longest vacation I’ve taken from work since … March of 2003, when I visited Christine in Portland. The trip to Vegas was also the first time I took a plane out of state since then as well.

Well, the vacation ended up being extended a few days, but not out of “good times”. Sunday night, I started developing immense pain in my abdomen. It was taking me way too long to sleep, and Rio’s snoring made me quite envious in my painful sleeplessness.

I eventually fell asleep, but awoke a few hours later on the bathroom floor with Rio asking me what happened, and me hysterically saying I didn’t know. He took me back to bed, and then a few hours later.. it happened again. This time, I had a nasty cut Rio patched up. The bathroom cabinet door had been broken from my fall.

I awoke, wanting to go to work, but as I got up for my usual morning routine, I passed out again. I wrote in sick, and said I was going to the hospital.

Despite that, it still took Rio & me a while to get there. I kept hoping it would go away.. that I’d sleep it off. The pain would be gone; I’d stop fainting. But, after 2 more of these spells, we had Fernando (Rio’s father / my father-in-law) pick us up and take us to the ER.

It’s hard to remember what happened exactly, in order after that.. all I really remember is that I laid on a bed, they did their tests which caused screaming and wailing in pain on my part, and it was determined that I had a “ruptured ovarian cyst” along with internal bleeding. I needed surgery.

This was the first time I had undergone any kind of surgery in my life, and I was terrified. I awoke later, and was transported to a bed with a relentlessly beeping IV that the nurses rarely tended to. Luckily, I didn’t have a roommate that night, and Rio spent the night next to me on the floor. It seemed like he got better sleep than I did — for some reason, I woke up at 34 minutes after the hour every hour. 12:34, 1:34, 2:34.. and so on.

He couldn’t spend all day with me, but he spent as much as he could. He came back with Robin (his mother / my mother-in-law) and he brought me a few things from the house. He couldn’t spend the night with me that night either (I had acquired a roomie during the day), but we watched as much of Little Miss Sunshine as we could until visiting hours were over.

Rio arrived this morning before I even woke up, and after hours of waiting with him, I was finally discharged. He took the day off to take care of me, and we re-watched Little Miss Sunshine from the beginning (previously mentioned roomie was nice, funny, and interesting, but also really noisy the night before), and then took a nap together before he left for class.

I feel lucky to be alive, and even luckier to have the best husband in the world. Now, I shall wait for our dinner to arrive, and retire to slumberland with the one who completes me …. :)

On Thursday, November 15th, 2007, Rio & I took a plane to Las Vegas. We spent the morning furiously packing, as we should have done the night before. In fact, when Rio called the cab, I accidentally broke the zipper off the bag I was using for our shower products that I was rushing to close, due to my fears that the cab would actually get to our front steps before we could.

We waited nearly 15 minutes on the front steps anyway.

The cab driver was mildly amusing as he told us multiple stories of why he was no longer allowed in certain casinos, and we still arrived at SFO with over an hour to spare.

The process of checking in at the airport went relatively smoothly, although I did end up getting “randomly selected” for an additional security screening that involved a machine shooting air at me (or so they say — for all I know, it could have been poisonous gas). The plane was on time, and we arrived in Las Vegas on time as well.

Once we arrived at the McCarran Airport, Rio & I realized we had forgotten to print out the vouchers for the ground transportation we had purchased as well as the interactive wax museum. We weren’t quite sure how to deal with it at the airport just then, so we ended up paying the full $12 that it took for us to be shuttled off to ExCalibur, the hotel we had chosen to spend the next 4 nights at.

Despite being 4PM, rush hour had already started in Las Vegas, and it took a while to get there. I was somewhat edgy and overwhelmed by the flashy city and the multitude (or so it felt) of marriage-preparation tasks that extended past the highway we were stuck on.

We smoked our first cigarette in Vegas outside the ExCalibur, and talked about the weather — how it was the same temperature, but so much warmer. As we got up from the bench we were sitting on, Rio let me know about the friendly cockroach on the wall behind me. I wasn’t very appreciative of that, or the cockroach, and we checked in at the hotel.

Almost immediately, we were approached by a lady that wanted to give us free money, and a free dinner at the ExCalibur’s “Tournament of the Kings”. I was relatively wary of this, and wanted to know what the catch was. Apparently, it was taking some sort of trip in which we previewed their latest resort, and as soon as we consented to it, she was trying to take over an entire day of our trip. We told her how we were there to get married, but weren’t yet, and she said that was fine as long as we had some form of documentation that we lived together, such as a phone bill. When we could not provide this evidence for her, she apologized and said that she couldn’t offer the opportunity after all. The “opportunity” turned out to be a timeshare, and as we did not really want to share our time anyway, we weren’t all that disappointed.

We finally got to the room, and fretted over seemingly impossible tasks, like getting our marriage license, finding white shoes for my wedding dress, and renting a tuxedo for Rio. We decided that a lot of our anxiety was related to not eating, and ordered a 16″ pizza from room service for $15.50. The pizza seemed like a good idea during the first few bites, but, as Rio put it, it was “good food if you were drunk”, and left quite a bit to be desired.

We wandered around outside for a while as we tried to figure out how to get a cab — it wasn’t as easy as it seemed, even when they were everywhere. I realized early on as we walked through the Luxor why I had hated Las Vegas in my teenage years — it’s an agoraphobe’s worst nightmare. I have this habit of immediately finding every emergency exit I can whenever I enter a room, and it is hard enough to find any kind of exit at all there.

We finally found a Taxi Stop, where we took a cab to the Marriage Bureau. Our cab driver was extremely friendly and helpful. He congratulated us upon hearing we were getting married, and when Rio mentioned needing a tuxedo rental, the driver called a friend and found 3 possible places for us. Rio has a theory that he liked us because we were getting married for the “right reasons”. He had been driving a cab in Vegas for something like 10 years, and was probably used to impromptu intoxication-induced mistakes.

When we arrived at the Marriage Bureau, he told us to catch a cab by walking “that way” (motioning towards downtown), and not “that way” (motioning towards Who Knows).

“It’s not that it’s dangerous or anything, just go .. ‘that way’”, he said, motioning towards downtown again. I imagined the other way was probably the Las Vegas version of the Tenderloin and agreed.

We stepped out of the cab, and we were immediately approached by two men who wanted to sell us on their wedding chapel. We told them that we had already reserved a wedding chapel, but they were nice and continued to congratulate us on our wedding just the same.

We went inside, and were told to each fill out a form, an application of sorts.

There were two other couples in the room with us, and as we waited, Rio & I made up stories about them. The first one was trying to get a Visa (we overheard them talking about some sort of complication involving Guatemala). The second one was just wearing a wedding dress for the hell of it when her husband-to-be approached her and said, “hey, nice dress — wanna get married?”

We triumphantly left the Marriage Bureau, license in hand, and the same two men who had so eagerly promoted their chapel earlier also immediately hailed us a cab, so we never had to worry about going “that way”.

We got back to the room, relieved and happy with the completion of the “first step”. Although it was only 11PM, room service was closed, and we ended up going to the 24 hour Krispy Kreme in the ExCalibur for 6 donuts. I commented on the “circus horror movie” aspect of Las Vegas as we went through the floor, watching the glowing faces of the zombies that guarded each slot machine.

Around midnight, we resigned to slumberland, anxious with the anticipation of our wedding in 15 hours.

Rio squeezed my hand; I squeezed back. Our anxiety over the right words to say at that moment had been consuming us for the last half of the dinner, the way the last half of my overpriced macaroni and cheese remained uneaten in front of me.

It was the first time he had ever met my little brother, and the third time he had spent any time with my dad. My brother and him had seemed to click earlier over a common interest of juggling, and my dad brought up a story of magic tricks from my childhood that I had attempted to use as an introduction to our own story earlier that week. He said he had something to announce to my dad, his voice quivering, his hand firmly holding on to my own.

“I wanted to ask you…”

I had thought, for a second, he was asking permission, and feared a negative reaction. I interrupted him: “just say it!”

He was confused, as were my brother and dad. I felt bad, seeing how difficult it was for him to get as far as he had, our own shared fears inducing the desire for secrecy, and encouraged him to go on. He stumbled on his words, but quickly regained composure.

“I asked Beth to marry me, and she said ‘yes’. I wanted to ask for your blessing.”

My dad, was slightly surprised: “she did?”

There was a slight lull of quiet confusion, and my brother, as if to prompt my dad’s own appropriate response, said “congratulations”.  My dad said Rio met his base expectations for a husband, and as part of the father role, asked Rio about his ability to provide.

I couldn’t help but think about our third date. We had walked up to the top of Church St. where Rio found a couch and asked if I wanted to sit down. He had joked at the time, “see, baby? I’m a provider!” Now, he was serious as he answered my dad’s questions.

My dad told him he met his qualifications for a husband, and gave us the blessing we had requested. We could finally exhale.

My brother had said he wasn’t shocked, in fact he already knew, and almost said something about it to my dad earlier. It was obvious to him, just as it was to Blake when he put his trademark skepticism aside to tell me that he had “a good feeling about this one” a month earlier.

My dad asked about plans of children, which Rio took as a sign that my father thought our wedding plans were a result of an unplanned pregnancy. “Nothing is in the pipeline now”, he answered quickly, as I said “one day, but when we do, it will be because it was planned, and not a mistake”. My dad said, just as I had predicted and warned Rio of, “I just want some biological grandchildren of my own!”

We walked along 4th st, and descended the stairs into the BART station. My brother and dad were going one way, and we were going the other. Their train arrived shortly after I gave brief details of our engagement and wedding, and they were gone.

Rio and I felt nearly light-headed after the weight of our heavy anxiety regarding the unknown outcome was lifted, and cuddled on BART as we talked.  It seemed even more real… we were getting married.

We got home, and sat on the steps to smoke. We stared in each others eyes, and suddenly it hit me: I wasn’t just seeing the future. I was seeing my past and present too. I was seeing what John and Blake had seen, what I had witnessed between my father and Gail the first time I met her. Not just love. Life.