Chocolate cake...

One of our favorite baristas at Seattle’s Best is getting married soon. (Was the word “barista” in existence before Starbucks began its world take-over? Or was that a title they made up, because “coffee-maker-server-person-who-pours-the-foam” was too cumbersome? I’m just wondering, because before Starbucks, did we really HAVE a whole lot of coffee bars? If not, I guess the word “barista” wouldn’t have been very useful. And why do I always think of British lawyers when I’m hanging out in a Starbucks?? (Barista – barrister – barrister – barista… just in case someone didn’t get that)). Wow. Double parentheses. I am strangely impressed by my parenthetical tangent-within-a-tangent...

Um, what was I saying? Oh yes – one of our favorite baristas at Seattle’s Best is getting married soon. And when my mom and I were getting coffee yesterday morning, she mentioned how helpful her own mother has been throughout the wedding-planning process. Her mother was not, she explained, overbearing or pushy – she simply wanted to help in whatever way she could. This conversation prompted my own mom to ask, as we were leaving the coffee shop, whether or not she’d been “overbearing or pushy” during the planning of my own wedding. It was interesting to think about, because it wasn’t so much that anyone was overbearing or pushy when I was planning my wedding – it was more like there was simply an unspoken understanding that certain things had to be done a certain way. I attended several weddings the few years before and after I got married, and to be honest, they were all pretty much the same. It’s like there’s a wedding template out there somewhere, and when you get married, you just sort of plug in a few specifics and run with it.

Take the question of the wedding cake. I remember sort of half-jokingly (because I was already well-aware of the wedding template) suggesting to the caterer that we plan on a chocolate wedding cake. My suggestion was met with slight gasps of shock and a vehement “you can’t have a CHOCOLATE wedding cake!” So I ended up with the same Italian cream cake that everyone else was serving at THEIR weddings. In fact, for all I know, it was the EXACT same cake. Maybe it was never actually eaten, it was just for looks… and then it was recycled with a new layer of frosting and sent over to the next wedding…

And all of this got me thinking – what IS uniquely “me”? There have been times in my life when I feel sort of “cookie cutter” – like I’m just like everyone else; one of the crowd. Like when I’m in Yankee Stadium – most people are there because they love the Yankees. Everyone is a Yankee fan. And that’s fine with me. But the cookie cutter times are few and far between – most of the time, I feel like I’m so much different than a lot of people, and some of that may be true and some of it may simply be my own skewed perceptions.

But without a doubt, a chocolate wedding cake would’ve been more representative of “me.” As would a purple wedding dress, an eclectic mix of music, and a Sheltie ring bearer (actually, that might be a bad idea… Shelties have a tendency to bark loudly at inopportune times…). There is something to be said for tradition, though – perhaps it’s comforting, in a way. Like knowing that the Yankees will be wearing the same pinstripes they’ve always worn when they run out of the home dugout.

It just wouldn’t be the same if they wore green polka dots, would it?


This is representative of me as an impressionist painting... (I need to stop writing late at night when I'm tired and extra-weird... :))