A Wedding in Portland – Notes towards an observation
I had never been to Portland, and so had no inkling I’d be overpowered by every shade of verdant moss under the incessantly cloud-curtained skies or find Franks A Lot, home of as many tofu hot dog options as I could shake celery salt upon.
The occasion was the wedding of my good friend Jennie (a Korean gal whose family came to Portland when she was in middle school) to her fiancé Paul, a Chinese-American U.S.-born guy who I’d yet to meet. Whenever Paul had come to Chicago, Jenny would disappear for however many days, weeks, months, only to resurface and ask to go to brunch, always telling me to pick, and always ending up going where she wanted to go. Through these occasional days spent brunching and shopping (or standing outside a Forever 21 or Abercrombie & Fitch waiting for her to get her fix), we’d become better friends, and then Jennie left Chicago several months ago, engaged to Paul.
I’d lost my brunch buddy, but hoped it was for the best, although she was not what I would call passionate about this marriage. It tore her away from independence and Chicago and when I pressed her about why she was doing it, she said her dad thought it was a good idea. No elaboration could be extracted. Now I was bringing myself to this wedding, as well as the scads of coupons, insurance bills, and other pieces of mail brought to her apartment after her departure.
To thicken the plot, my roomie and driving-around-town buddy would be my Korean friend Richard, a Traditional Chinese Medicine student now living in L.A., also formerly in Chicago. He’d moved to the states about five or six years ago, when I took a job in Chicago, and has exasperated me ever since.
When he’d come here, no one at the Christmas party where we three had met could understand him. Thais, Chinese, Africans, Euro-Americans, etc., would shrug their shoulders and smile, but he was outgoing and kind, so he won their friendship regardless. Many English lesson group lessons, orchestrated by him and me over the years, had made him better understood, but he had also lapsed a bit since he’d moved away, ensconced in a much more Korean-laden environment in California for whatever reason. Of course my Korean is next to nonexistent, so who am I to judge?
We suckled some jujube juice with ginger in the Hertz parking lot after our long flights and drove off. As we drove through Portland’s funky and coffee – and crepe-filled Hawthorne district, Richard was talking animatedly to Jennie on the phone. He hung up and immediately reported that she had a loose stool—this the day before the wedding—shook his head gravely, and said that we needed to find some herbs at an acupuncture shop. I was not wholly surprised by his statement, but could not help finding it interesting she had divulged this particular condition to him. Despite knowing a plant or two, I didn’t recognize the picture he flashed to me on his Droid, but the all-knowing phone had no problem quickly finding a nearby clinic. For $1 we had what we needed—Artemisia, a plant I had seen in fish tanks, and the “moxa” for burning it.
Richard fretted throughout the nostril-pleasing-fresh-air-of-Portland day over Jennie’s well-being, and I tried to keep him calm as I didn’t think his anxiety over her would be any good for her anxiety—she was rehearsing and doing all those other things next-day brides must do. We got the call around 9 pm though, and off we went to her parents’ house, where we were welcomed by the most haggard looking version of our friend I’d ever seen, even slimmer, but serving up strawberries and watermelon and being soothed somewhat by her younger sister and niece and nephew, who showed off their Beethoven-plonking abilities to me.
Richard seized his chance to administer. Lights were dimmed, an antique lighter was pulled from a drawer, and we gathered around as Jennie was wrapped in her niece’s tackily festive snuggie. A bit of banter with Jennie’s little sister about how to light and throw “jumping jack” firecrackers, why people should walk rather than Segway, and Chicago snows and winds, and I turned my gaze to see Jennie on her back, half be-snuggied, with tiny needles piercing the tops of her feet and hands, several more round her pelvic area and her legs. I can’t pretend to remember which needle was tending to which sector of the body, but soon smoke burned the dried Artemisia mounted atop the needle, and ash landed on foil spread at the base of the needle.
It was probably the first time she’d stopped all day, and as the smoke permeated the room, and snuggie, Richard took to twisting the bride’s leg in odd ways, standing on her heels, etc. All this was welcomed despite minor groans of pain. We looked on silently; her niece called out that she wanted Jennie to wash her snuggie and get the smoke out of it; someone opened a window.
It was over and she felt and looked a bit better. Jennie got up, thanked Richard, bid us eat more fruit, informed me I’d be caring for the five fish and giant fish bowl she’d acquired for the wedding, and started washing dishes and running around like her usual self.
The wedding was the next day and it went off with few hitches, the poor fish we’d carted around being one, but that’s another article. This meandering article was planned to be observations of a hybrid Korean-Chinese-American wedding, the bride Korean, groom Chinese, and America bringing it all together. Turns out it was a standard American wedding and reception apart from the church having lots of posted notices in Chinese characters, and a 12-course Chinese banquet afterwards. Garter, bouquet, dull inside-joke-laden speeches, and all that.
The day after we were invited back to Jennie’s, spending more time with her relatives and family of all ages over loads of food and conversation, the former of which I ate of prodigiously, the latter of which I little understood.
Although American wedding tradition permeated the formal festivities, it was the sharing of home life and the vigilant acupuncture treatment that pleased my heart that weekend. Jennie’s father made a special point of feeding us breakfast and taking us to see some sights. And as I stood beside Jennie’s father and Richard under an umbrella in midst of a downpour admiring mammoth Multnomah Falls, a bag of praline “beaver poop” in my mitts, I realized how good it was to just be another human blessed with good friends.