By Leslie Senevey
The most up close and personal I’ve ever been with a tornado was during the Big One of 2000. It was whirling right over our neighborhood when my husband decided to be a pretend storm chaser. There he stood in the middle of the street, eyes cast to the turbulent skies, holding our sweet, footie-pajamaed baby in his arms. There I stood on our front porch, screaming at him over the wailing emergency sirens, to get our baby inside the house RIGHT THIS MINUTE.
I don’t know what he needed to take cover from more in that instant — the angry twister or his angry wife, who was panicked the tornado might suck up her child like boba tea through a straw.
We all survived, and spoiler alert — have lived through many other threatening tempests since then.
There was the time our family of four, plus our two dogs and a cat, took shelter in a hallway as hail shattered windows in our house and the windshields of our cars. There was the time I got caught in a flash flood that caused my car to float like I was on the Log Ride at Six Flags. (It might have been fun if the water that seeped inside my car that day hadn’t left it smelling like eau de dead fish.) Snowmageddon and the resulting power outage a few years ago had us sleeping in hats and gloves, burrowed under every blanket in the house and two large dogs who aren’t normally allowed on the bed. And most recently, we hunkered at home for five days straight during January’s ice fest.
You can’t live a life without weathering a few storms. Some are metaphorical, like illness, loss or assembling Ikea furniture. Others are meteorological, like the aforementioned tornado and flash flood. If you’re human, you’ve probably experienced the former. If you’re Texan, you’ve probably lived through more than your fair share of the latter, especially during May when late springtime storms are practically a rite of passage.
All rites of passage do not involve barometric pressure, though. Many, especially some associated with May and June, are celebratory like proms, graduations and the end of the school year, weddings, and around these parts, Mayfest, Fort Worth’s annual outdoor festival on the banks of the Trinity. As a native Fort Worthian, I’ve attended this springtime tradition more than a few times.
Things I’ve done at Mayfest: danced on stage, held a baby lion, purchased art, witnessed a squirrel waterskiing, sloshed through mud, almost had a heat stroke, ran for cover during one of those previously mentioned meteorological events.
The same way one outdoor festival can incorporate things as disparate as giant turkey legs and waterskiing rodents, weddings, the epitome of a rite of passage in June, can incorporate a full range of individual preferences and plans. They are as customizable as a Subway sandwich, which can be simple or extravagant, traditional or wholly unconventional. If all goes well, the result is the same — a married couple.
I’ve personally attended many traditional wedding ceremonies and celebrations, but I have also been to a Quaker wedding conducted in silence (it was beautiful), a Vegas wedding (it was Elvis-y), and a hobbit wedding where groomsmen sported hairy bare feet and the officiant wore a cloak (it was, literary).
I’ve never seen a wedding at Mayfest, although it very well could have happened. My own wedding featured my dad stepping on my train at the altar and ripping it off my dress. Rites of passage, like Texas weather, can be unpredictable.
Regardless of the setting, style, or slip-ups involved, who doesn’t love the joy and optimism of a wedding? The public declaration of love. The exchanging of vows. The gathering of friends and family. The hope that marriage can offer a different kind of shelter from life’s storms.
And isn’t that what we are all looking for, married or not, at home or at an outdoor festival on the banks of a river — a safe place that holds the possibility of happy times ahead? Turkey legs, Elvis and umbrellas are optional, but if you’re attending an outdoor wedding in Texas, you might want to bring that umbrella along, just in case.