The Royal We

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On an island that was once under rule of the British and where nearly 80% of all tourism comes from the UK, it should come as no surprise that the wedding of Prince William to Kate/Catherine Middleton would cause a little stir and excitement.  There were cafes and bars that hosted early morning or all day events with traditional English food and Pims cocktails, hanging of the Union Jack in shop windows, as well as a denial by many of any interest whatsoever in what the royals were up to.  Of course I was told by a few that the Americans were more interested than they in the nuptials and then saw that played over and over again on many news outlets when royal wedding tourists from Tennessee and Oklahoma ended up being interviewed in tiaras and feather boas outside the Palace.  Nice.


I won't lie.  I watched the wedding at 5:45 am after a long night with very little sleep and lots of wake ups from the kiddies and would do it again, even knowing that it would be rebroadcast one hundred times that day.  I did the same for Princess Diana's funeral, rising at 4 am after my wake up call, from my dad, and sitting quietly sobbing in my tiny studio apartment in Boston.  I'm not ashamed.  My excitement was not really because of an attraction to all things royal, nor to things British, though I have often had a soft spot there, but because I am so moved by witnessing someone else's destiny.


Princess Diana was to the manner born and though she could not have known that she would be chosen an appropriate mate for a future king, it wasn't out of the realm of possibilities.  But Kate Middleton, how could she ever have guessed this?  Maybe she dreamed it.  Maybe she willed it.  Maybe it was written.  I'm not sure; I am still working on that.  But I think often, probably everyday, about how I am where I am moment to moment.  A black girl from Freehold, NJ with southern family roots married to a Frenchman who'd moved all over France, to Belgium, travelled abroad, lived in different parts of the States and together made two beautiful crazies.  I consider fate and destiny every day when I think of our future and what we will do next and how we will do it and how lucky we are to do it together. 


During that period a few months ago when Dan Savage's "It gets better" campaign for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered youth got underway after a series of profiled suicides and humiliations came to light, I thought of how true this is, or can be, for us all.  I thought of how I could never have known I would find such happiness, but that also in tough, ugly, humiliating times, I could find a voice and a place where I could trust myself over the noise and the nonsense.  When I saw Kate Middleton in that gorgeous Alexander McQueen dress, I didn't want to be her, didn't even envy her.  It's just that she seemed truly present, truly accepting of that moment in all its facets in her life.  We watched and loved her and hopefully felt love.  Just love without all the other stuff, judgments, considerations, calculations.


When I first met Didier, on that first day before he was DIDIER and was just Didier, the chef at the restaurant I'd just started working, I saw a glimmer, a flash, a second, split second, and I sucked in my breath and said, under it, "Oh boy."  I just knew there would be a "we."  Some nights, say when I am running from our bedroom to the girls' room and then back after hearing one of them shouting, talking, crying on the monitor or when the girls are snuggled up under my arm reading a story complete with Lily's interpretations of all images, sights, and sounds or when, once they are fast asleep, Didier and I just look at each other across a paper and crayon strewn living room with a knowing look, I am stunned by the fact that we are, indeed, a "we."  My life as I'd known it has changed and my commitment to these people and to life has been made ever stronger. 

So when I watched the royal wedding, as when I watch any wedding really (you should have seen me bawling my face off at my brother Jeff's wedding to his insanely fabulous betrothed), I am excited by and reminded of hope, that moment when we trust in the good, suspend disbelief for even just a moment that the fights, poopy diapers, fatigue rage, and all kinds of things, serious and not so, will eventually enter into the picture.  I am tickled by the fact that two people, whoever they are, came together in that moment as their best selves (hopefully) or at least their best projections.  I am floored by destiny.  How did these people find each other in the rough seas of souls surfing killer waves all over the planet?  I am a sucker, I know.  But I'd rather be a sucker for love who held out for my prince, warts and all, than a tight, closed fist of a heart looking for all that is wrong instead of all that is right.  Even a cynical fool like myself, Depeche Mode/Cure sure that I was fated for loneliness am part of a royal "we."

(c)  Copyright 2011.  City Mom in the Jungle.