5.17.2010

Shower Scene

For some time now, since my first bridal shower actually, I have wanted to sit down and write a post about the experience of being showered. As it were.

But nothing came.

So I waited, hoping that by the time my second shower rolled around, I would be ready to put pen to paper. As it were. And here I am, post-second shower, feeling a little rudderless but determined nonetheless to share the experience with my 6-ish readers.

I will admit I was very nervous Sunday morning, April 18th in the hours before my first bridal shower. Something about imminent schmoozing always tightens my ribcage a little bit. I drove myself North to Deerbrook Mall, where my mother and our family friend Babette waited behind the locked doors of Connie Pagano salon – opened early just for the three of us. I walked from the parking lot to the salon with my hand held high over my head, the weight of my shower dress in its garment bag working a nasty knot into my right shoulder. I banged on the door until our hairdresser let me in, and before my mother had the chance to hug me, I saw the tightness in her face and the sharp intake of breath. We are both fantastically skilled at carrying our anxiety in our bodies.

We sat there kibitzing with Babette and Setta (the hairdresser), laughing at the fact that my mother and Babette now sit once a week in the salon to have their hair styled – just like their mothers did in the 60s. And periodically, a very serious look would settle over my mother’s face - or my own - as we remembered some other piece of wedding planning we had neglected, or just the simple fact that in a few hours a room full of expectant faces would be turned toward us . . . well . . . expectantly.

I applied my own makeup in one of the giant salon mirrors as the hairdresser tamed my mother’s Ashkenazic mane.

And then it was time. We raced to my parent’s Deerfield home to jump into our shower dresses. My mother wore a stunning Etro knee length sheath dress with a muted paisley print and one lone ruffle running down the front of the skirt. I wore a bright reverse border print dress with a fitted bust and an explosive box-pleated skirt (with pockets!).

Upon arriving at Green Acres Country Club, we walked into the dining room where the hostesses awaited us and the rest of our guests. As I entered, they turned towards me one by one as if in an old film, smiling fantastically with their arms outstretched. And I felt, in a way - and please excuse the dated reference - like a deb at her coming out ball. You see, most of the hostesses have known me for many years, if not since I was a small child. They have seen the tough times, the lack of self-care and withdrawn discomfort that must have surely read as supreme self-absorption. And it was easier facing them than I thought it would be, in my crisp dress and carefully coiffed hair. Because even as they all complimented me on the look of my straightened locks, I was loving my natural curls and my unpainted face and my sometimes messy insides that aren’t as scary as I thought they were. And it was me wearing the beautiful dress, not the other way around.

So there I was, hugging my old friends and laughing at myself and loving my fiancé right out loud.

And about a month later, I burst into the dining room at Idlewild Country Club with a furiously insistent growling in my belly that needed quieting before I could even think of playing nice. Judy, one of my future mother-in-law’s good friends, walked up to hug me and I latched onto her open arms with what must have been a death grip. When she offered to show me where the washroom was located, I told her that first I needed mixed nuts or some crackers. ANYTHING. NOW. So while she looked frantically for something to stabilize my dangerously low blood sugar, I tried my best to calm the crazed look in my eyes and avoid crying like a child as I balanced on my precarious four inch heels.

Like I said, I’m still a little messy sometimes.

When she returned with a martini glass full of mixed nuts, I was curled up in a chair in the Country Club’s lobby, licking my wounds, with the crumbs from a decimated pack of oyster crackers – brought to me by the club’s gracious manager - covering my lap. I looked up at her and smiled sheepishly, crossing my Stewart Weitzman clad feet daintily in front of me and apologizing for my Oscar-worthy entrance. Thankfully she laughed in the most sincere way and told me not to worry, that she had been there herself many times.

And this is what I love about spending time with my future in-laws and their friends. They seem to understand - much like my own family - that no matter how friendly or well adjusted you may be; you can still have your . . . moments. So I recovered as gracefully as possible, put away my claws and rejoined the human race.

The shower was intimate and beautiful. And each woman gave to me, tucked into a binder with a lemon motif on the cover, a family recipe and the story attached to it. My future mother-in-law presented me with her mother’s recipe for white cake with mocha icing, which is famous in the family and called “Shasha Cake” in deference to the woman who created it. And she warned me that baking the cake can be an undertaking, and that my newly acquired family will surely and firmly judge the results.

The passing of this recipe to me warmed my heart more than I can possibly say. Because I have seen the pictures of my fiancĂ© eating the last real Shasha Cake ever made. And I have sat with my future in-laws eating this aunt’s or that aunt’s Shasha cake, ruthlessly grading its success against the genuine article while everyone invariably recounts stories about Shasha herself. And it scares me to know that someday soon, I will be the one whose baking prowess is ruthlessly graded. But I will rise to the occasion, hoping that the woman who I never had a chance to meet would have been proud of the results.

And the man with whom I am so deeply in love - and whose name I will soon carry - will smile up at me, belly full of memories.