Our wedding celebration would not be complete without some time in my home state.  Even though I’ve been away a long time, it has been really great for me to get back in touch with so many loved ones from my formative years.  I’m grateful that I took full advantage of this rite of passage to see so many people who I haven’t seen on account of having limited time whenever I travel home.  My parents threw us a dinner at the DYC which was also really special to me since I spent so much time on Belle Isle as a kid.

I’m not sure that I mentioned this anywhere else so far, but David’s dad gave me a good talking to sometime around our nuptials.  He told me quite firmly that I’m now to call him “dad” and if I call him Dean, he will not respond.  One of his first acts as my new dad was to come back to Michigan with us for our celebration there.  I appreciated his presence and the intention behind it very much.

I was rather excited for our final wedding event because I had the idea that I’d get to enjoy doing more crafting.  I got to spend nearly an entire day with Jodie and Sam in their adorable little house doing just that.  Jodie prepared one of my favorite meals and I just sat in the kitchen and crafted.  What a lucky duck!  Thank you Jodie for giving me such a perfect day!

Our party at the DYC was fun, Joan and Ted arrived early to help us set up.  Our dad’s decided that their best contribution was to hang out together at the bar before the festivities got underway.  Unfortunately I had a massive headache so I wasn’t quite myself.  We followed a similar format to the one that we’d had in California with my dad acting as emcee.  Once again, a lot of people got up and shared beautiful thoughts and stories.  We had been looking forward to dancing the night away after our meal, but sadly not many others seemed to have the same idea and as the meal concluded so did the evening.  Once again I was not in my usual dancing form and perhaps it was the heat that gave others the notion that it was time to head home.  I’m not really sure.  It was a lovely time all the same and I’ve got a great playlist that I’ve put to use a few times since then.

Following is the beautiful meal blessing from Nancy Combs and the poem that Amir wrote.  Both were wonderful and I was so happy that they each gave me a written copy.

Nancy Combs’ blessing

Good and gracious God,

We gather here this evening from the diverse ages and stages of our lives, from the joys and challenges of our days, and for a few hours time stops as together we surround Faye and David with our love, to celebrate their love and the lifelong promise they have made to each other.

For this couple, their families, these friends, and this feast, we thank you.

Oh God, as we are nourished tonight by food, fellowship and Faye and David’s happiness, we ask that you teach us, in our own ways, to set the table in a world where everyone can be fed, where all your children can live with happiness, health, and hope.

And in the days and decades to come, we ask you to give Faye and David eyes to see and ears to hear your will and abundant blessings for their lives, including the eyes and ears to really see and really hear each other.  Amidst the whirlwind, let their love always light the way home to that quiet place where their hearts are one.

We offer this prayer in the name of all that is good, gracious, grateful, courageous, and kind. We offer this prayer in the name of love.

And let all the people say, AMEN.

A poem by Amir Baghdadchi

Faye Elizabeth Stevenson – An appreciation

whenever you try to explain MISS FAYE
to someone not lucky enough to have MET HER
they never quite believe there could be a human being so cheerfully unfettered

Each one of us here can tell many tales,
of the incredible things this miss DID
how at times she can seem just a little eccentric
though only recently has she been twisted
But we love her pursuits, how she pursues them with GUSTO
and never does anything partial
she perfects her crafts, and masters her arts,
and some of those arts are MARTIAL

So three cheers, and rejoice, for our pure minded girl
so pure she won’t believe in sin,
who’s married, made honest, and made all us happy
That’s Faye Elizabeth Stevenson

After our party we had one more fun activity planned which was to go sailing on Joan’s boat.  This is another one of those fun Michigan activities that I’ve been too busy to partake in since moving to California so it was a particularly special treat for me.  Sailing on the bay doesn’t come close to sailing on Lake St. Clair and I was a happy clam out on Joan’s boat in the company of good friends and family.  It seems only fair that my wedding reflections conclude with the words of Marian, my partner in crime too many times for me to remember (although it would seem that she does, she’s quite the story teller).

An unfinished account of our adventures by Marian Green (as presented on Lake St. Clair)

Unfettered, n’er bound by your standard conventions
She declares with confidence her definite intentions

Like this one time back in her early teen years
Expressing to friends a promise, she swears
Very determined and so resolute,
That she’ll absolutely avoid disrepute
The contract was drawn on a napkin with friends
No sex before marriage, I heard it contends
Said contract’s conveniently vanished from sight
So said friends shan’t collect on that bet tonight

Ho ’bout the weekend we delivered crew sleighs
To the end of the boat race at put in bay
The weathered skin sailors wonder ’bout whitey
(One thought she might be his own aphrodite)
When asked why her skin was so very pale
Faye explained simply we’d just left the jail.
Next day underway to return to Detroit
It occurred to Faye it’s a longer exploit
The time didn’t go quite as she’d planned
So Faye missed her sift and was subsequently canned.

I’m not sure what big life event I’ll have that will justify my asking Marian to write out the rest of her stories.  I’ll keep thinking on that one, stay tuned……

Our May Day Park day was David’s “pet” event.  My husband loves tree time.  Especially when the trees are redwoods.  In fact we just had our second annual May Day Park Day and it was great.

We had to get to the park by 10a to hold our space even though we paid for it.  This was hard, especially because we were all soooo completely exhausted.  I remember literally dragging myself up the slight incline to the table site, I was that tired.  I picked up Alicia, then somehow Alexa and Scott were there too, I can’t even remember how we got them.  We got there on time, but I had to get May Pole ribbons and Alicia needed sustenance so we left Alexa and Scott in charge of holding the space.  They were there alone in the woods for a while.  They didn’t have too much fun during that time.  I’m guessing that they probably would have preferred to be snuggled up in their beds.  They each deserve kudos for making the sacrifice because once people began to arrive, everybody was really grateful to have some peaceful time outside to close out the week.  We danced the may pole, we had some silly fun led by Harris and Ren, we had a talent show.  We ate tasty food (lots of desserts) and generally just decompressed from a long week of reveling.

I hope that in future years we’ll be able to rally volunteers to lead even more organized activities for our May Day Park days since the template for the event is the Albert Kahn company picnics that we used to attend when I was a kid.  I’m learning that these sorts of events are a midwestern phenomenon because I’m not the only one who has fond memories of field activities in a park with a bunch of families whose parental units were my dad’s co-workers.  Hopefully as our friends’ kids get older and as our families grow we’ll have a critical mass of people who realize what fun we can have with an afternoon of parent-led activities and we’ll keep yet another fun tradition alive.   I envision this as an annual opportunity for our friends and family to gather from afar.  These early days of May seem to deliver spectacular weather and I think that it’s fun to plan a visit to the bay around at least one big activity.  I think that right now most of the people that we know with kids are still slightly sleep deprived between hustling to get themselves comfortably set up financially and lifestyle-wise, and having young children who don’t always sleep through the night.  I figure that eventually we’ll be in a different stage where our kids will be really into games and we as parents will be happy to give all of ourselves a day of fun.  If my idea is correct then the last event of our wedding celebration was indeed our point of departure for a long life of fun times with our friends and family.  I cannot think of a better way to conclude our eight delightful days.

Aside from our wedding day which was obviously the most important day of the week, David and I each had our “pet” events.  The ball was mine.    I figure that it will take at least a few years of throwing balls before I get it down to a science.  According to many, our first attempt was a great success.  To an exhausted and somewhat frazzled Faye, it could have been better.  This is the downside of having high standards.  Ah well, if it had been perfect I wouldn’t have anything to look forward to in future years.  Often times when music is playing I’m the last one on the dance floor.  By the time Friday night rolled around I was so exhausted that I couldn’t even finish the polka that Scott and I had promised to each other.  Lucky for me I’ve got the rest of my life to dance the polka and I plan to do just that!

Enough kvetching, here are the highlights in order of occurrence:

• The amazing set-up crew, got into the space and got busy.  For one hour of work and a fair amount of confusion, they did an amazing job.
• Our excellent DJ St. Patrick, honored our wishes and did an fabulous job of facilitating what I hope everybody thought was a fun evening of dance.  I was so grateful for his efforts!
• Our super with-it staff of 5 young gals that Jan found for us.  This was their first foray into catering and I think that they did an excellent job.  Jan and Joyce did an amazing job of managing the kitchen and the food along with the help of others I’m sure.
• Turns out that our custodian for the evening was from one of the former Yugoslavian countries and hadn’t enjoyed borek since being here in the US, so he was happy as a clam.
• Our amazing guests who arrived with smiles and enthusiasm.  Thank you everybody for making such a fun party!
• Greek dances are the best!
• Only to be topped by the hora.  Being carried around on a chair is pretty fun.  A special thank you to our Jewish friends for sharing that tradition with us gentiles.  Had it not been for my dad’s request, we might have missed out.  So thanks to my dad too.
• Turns out that I wasn’t the only person who was tired from our ambitious week of activity.  There was some concern among our close ranks of supporters about whether or not we were going to be able clean up after such a big event.  Well our amazing guests came through yet again with an incredibly effective clean-up effort.  We did finish a bit ahead of schedule just because so many of us were pooped, but I felt so lucky to have the help of so many hands in putting our fabulous party to rest.  Thank you everybody who helped us leave no trace of our good times.

And here are the honorable mentions of the things that were planned, but truly deserve to be revisited in order to be fully enjoyed by all:

• self supporting human circle. That would have been fun with so many people!  Next time…..
• english country dance. Despite the heroic efforts of our fearless leaders, it seems that a caller – or hours and hours of highly concentrated preparation – really is needed to make a go of these things.  I guess that they had a bit more rehearsal than we did for that heart-tingling scene in Pride and Prejudice.  Incidentally, I had the most amazing night sometime after our ball at Ashkenaz in Berkeley.  One of the most popular callers on the west coast led us in a few different square dances, it was an amazing hour.  I walked out of there high as a kite.  To me that’s what dancing is all about.
• MJ line dance. My friend Laura S. didn’t let me live that one down for a while.  We’ll have to have another ball, just for that…..
• power outage at the photo shoot site. There has to be some technical problem at some point, that’s just how these things go.  Cheers to Erich for doing an amazing job in spite of that major snafu.
• prizes awarded to cake walk winners. Whoops!  I used up all the prizes earlier at the scavenger hunt and forgot to replenish my supply.  Those gals really did deserve a reward for their fabulous style:  Krisna Hanks and Allison Gonzalez, please come dance with me again sometime soon!
• Our Family Dessert Smorgasbord. Oh, I was so sad about this!  We went through all this effort to get everybody’s picks and then to be sure that each person’s dessert of choice was there.  And they were, but there was so much food that some of the goodies didn’t even see hungry mouths until the following day at our first annual May Day in the Park.  Some of the items we purchased, but some of them were homemade.  Here’s the record of our family favorites.  I had this whole plan of making a label for each dessert with the person’s name and a funny picture of them expressing their supreme gastronomic satisfaction.  I think that Sirena and Harris are the only ones who we actually got photos of.  They are quite funny, it would have been a challenge to choose just one.

• Faye: chocolate chip cookies (Nieman Marcus recipe)
• David: strawberry shortcake
• Elizabeth Stevenson, Faye’s mom: lemon bars
• Roger Cotting, Faye’s stepdad: orange cake
• Morley Stevenson, Faye’s dad: pineapple upside down cake
• Martina Stevenson, Faye’s stepmom: key lime tarts
• Thea Cullen, Faye’s aunt: pecan pie
• Ken Cullen, Faye’s uncle: banana cream pie (with banana in every bite)
• Scott Stevenson, Faye’s brother: cheesecake with cherries jubilee
• Cole Stevenson, Faye’s brother: apple crisp
• Alexa Stevenson, Faye’s sister: oatmeal scotchies (oatmeal butterscotch cookies)
• Dean Twist, David’s dad: dark chocolate fudge with walnuts
• Margo Tabet, David’s aunt: cream puffs
• Marilyn Twist, David’s aunt: peach pie
• Sirena Masket, David’s cousin: Indian sticks (a brownie variation)
• Harris Masket, David’s cousin in law: chocolate pudding with whipped cream
• Laura Tabet, David’s cousin: flour-less chocolate cake
• Ajay Reed, Laura’s girlfriend: carrot cake
• Mary Ann Twist, David’s cousin: fruit salad
• A Twist Family favorite (made by David’s aunt Jo in Wisconsin and shipped to us here in California): turtles
• Extras because we are dessert crazy: lemon meringue pie, nummy brownies (the ones with the purple flowers and the marshmallow layer)