My Uncles Wedding U.S.A.

 Memory Posted By: Anthony

At the age of six, it is rare that many memories stand out, that anything from my past stands out clearly and vividly. Ironically, the same medium that often served to glaze over those memories that tend to die from our childhood has resurfaced one or more of those very same long forgotten memories.

It was June of 1990, only three days after my birthday, and my family was packed into the long since forsaken interior of a 1972 van that my dad had kept since his bachelor days before my birth, bouncing up and down over the ruts and tears in the road of a small town somewhere in the vicinity of the middle of nowhere.

It was one of those times in life when things collided, when my own life overlapped with the goings on of the grownups, always running around and worrying about some stressful event or another. My birthday, only three days before and my brother’s birthday, he turning three, that very day, we set off from one of those neon flashing children’s play centers and a birthday party that I ironically do not remember.

I do remember the play center though, as we returned there over the years more than once for their batting cages and battered go kart circuit, a place where I gave and received my first black eye in a fight over the exact nature of having the right of way on a kart track. As for me, I had the right of way.

From what was likely a lively party though, I was placed into the back row of seating in my dad’s van, beside my sugar comatose brother and my grandmother. As one of the few last clear memories of her, it is surprisingly hard to recall if she said more than two or three words to me. Not only was it entirely too hot, us trapped inside of a tin can on wheels, barreling from suburban Seattle to the foothills of the Cascades, but her eldest son was getting married.

The trip to my uncle’s wedding had been planned for weeks. His fiancé had sent the invitations out in February, set the time and place, asked me and my brother to carry the rings, and had multiple conversations with my father about the exact reliability of his tin can. Everything had been set, right down the exact moment we would leave that play center with an hour to adjust for traffic, pit stops, and flat tires on the way.

It was only a 200 mile drive and none of us assumed it would be anything more than a quick affair. We would be staying with my Uncle’s new inlaws in Yakima and from there return the next day. Of course, as I would learn much later in life, things are never as simple as they seem. Stressed as they were, my parents did an admirable job of staying in time with the birthday celebrations, keeping their tone subtle with me and my brother even as we were surely slow and constantly complaining.

But it was not a three or a six year old that would ruin that trip over the hills of Western Washington. Rather, it was an 18 year old, a relic in its own standards and a properly maintained tin can that apparently didn’t care how properly it was maintained. What my father did not take into account was the sharp rise in temperature that occasionally occurs when one crosses the mountain passes and enters the Eastern half of our coastal state. No longer within striking distance of the Pacific Ocean, air tends to wallow and become entirely too hot.

By the time the van’s hood popped open and we lurched to a stop, the only person in that metal beast not sweating was my Grandmother, and to this day, I’m sure I can remember her clenching her teeth. It was some assortment of tubes and cooling related machinery that had decided to disconnect, break in half, and slide out from underneath the van, disappearing into the countryside.

Occasionally, with particularly vivid memories, the kind that I’ve discussed with my family and heard different versions of, I can envision the proceedings in a detached, third person perspective, floating above it all, amused by the drama that’s come before in my life. It’s in that mode that I see me and my brother leaning against the back seat with the door slid fully open, sweat pouring from our bodies, while my grandmother attempts futilely to shove water down my brother’s throat from a gallon jug. My dad is leaning torso deep into the open maw of the van and my mother is trying her hardest not to cry as she watches the clock tick slowly closer to the start of her brother’s wedding.

The ensuing hours, filled with the searing heat of the Eastern Washington sun, the simmering rage of my father, heartbroken shudders of my mother and her mother, and the absolutely bored, blank eyed silence of me and my brother, dragged on and on. The van was towed to the nearest town, sent into a shop, into which my father immediately followed, his sleeves rolled up now that tools and parts were at hand. It took only an hour for him to put that beat back together, but it was too late by then.

Five hours had passed, well beyond our one hour leeway and the wedding had begun without us. My mother’s attempts at calling the church were in vain and without the luxury of cell phones and a instant connect society, there was no way for her to tell him that we had been stuck.

I spent that night sleeping with head against a cold metal rod in the back of the van, my brother leaning against me, and for the first time in my life, me not caring that he was. For a six year old, the meaningless 12 hour trip meant nothing more than discomfort and a wasted day, time I could have spent playing the new Super Mario Bros. or chasing the dog around the yard with a water pistol. It wasn’t for another half a decade, when my grandmother passed away that I realized the reason I didn’t see my uncle anymore, why he and my mother had stopped talking so suddenly. The naivete of childhood clouds certain memories longer than others, but it’s always a thunder bolt when the fog finally clears and things make sense.