Washington DC in the spring is a not-quite-normal place. Perhaps the city on the Potomac is eternally damned to be that odd confluence of the civil servant, the K-Street creep, and the power-starved politician. But the have-nots abound as well, hailing from neighborhoods such as Anacostia, Suitland, Landover, which squat in embarrassing, damning proximity to the seat of a government that is play-acting, badly, at being productive. And representative. Off-stage the political thespians cater to the whims of a moneyed elite.
And any list of the Washington-area populace must include the climbers, easily recognized by their wandering eyes. Meet one at a DC gathering and you'll spy her scanning the room, marking notables to whom she singlemindedly, and clumsily, ingratiates herself. You, the detached visitor, bent toward a bit of wisdom about which sites to take in, instead witness patently bad fawning, struggle not to wince...
The unpleasant realization that you are exceptional in this gathering because you do not exhibit the traits which mark the narcissist or the sociopath will inspire an urgent and earnest search for an exit. At such moments, the airiness of the Jefferson and Roosevelt Memorials offer some relief from your bout of socio-claustrophobia. If your timing is right, you'll be treated not only to fresh, apolitical air, but to cherry blossoms.
My wife and I were accidentally gifted with a bit of discretionary income earlier that year. In a trickle down economy, now over three decades-old, this is almost inevitable at infrequent moments. The tireless machinery of the avaricious affluent operates on such a massive scale that clods of chump-change sometimes fall from the shovels of their front-end loaders. Most of us eke out a living amid these inefficiencies of scale, though of course, such distribution is anything but equitable.
We chose to use our windfall to travel to the nations' capitol, in part to drink in the history of the greatest experiment in democracy, or what was the greatest experiment until Reagan took office, and in part to visit acquaintances we'd met while canvassing for Barack Obama.
Terry, the friend in question, was then a recent college graduate who spent much of 2007 and 2008 in our home state, organizing and training canvassers for the Obama Campaign. We'd hit it off with this young man, who blended a zen-like stillness with a zeal for promoting real change, which the nation sorely needed after the embarrassing reign of Bush the Younger. Originally from Montana, Terry moved to DC after the election and found work as an aide to a Democratic Representative.
We met him and his girlfriend for dinner at a rooftop restaurant north of the White House. The DC skyline was a vivid spectacle in the fading twilight. As we chatted over dinner it struck my wife and I that these young lovers possessed a joie du vivre that brings a ready smile to anyone in their company. This was a refreshing change from the visibly calculating personalities we bumped into with disturbing frequency inside the beltway.
Ever curious, Terry's girlfriend Anju asked us about our occupations. My wife spoke at length about teaching at a public elementary school in an economically depressed and racially segregated neighborhood in Milwaukee, and I spoke about thirty years' work as a photographer. Terry and Anju peppered us with questions, eager to understand how such lives are lived. Their eyes and expressions revealed minds that were actively imagining such choices, and their questions probed our worldviews and mindsets to discern how these intersected our professions.
It became clear that these two were trying to fathom careers centered around service to others, such as my wife's, and what to make of my rather uncommon employment in the private sector. Timely questions for two twenty-somethings in search of careers, indeed lives, of meaning and purpose, and it compelled my wife and I to reflect on what motivated each of us.
Anju was a first generation American, born to parents who emigrated from India. She was especially curious to know what it was like to photograph a wedding in America. Well acquainted with the level of celebration and expense that is lavished on weddings in India, having heard much from her parents, she sought inside information from an insider. “What,” she asked at one point, “is the most memorable moment you have ever witnessed at a wedding?”
I had the answer ready. The memory sprang into consciousness in a flash. It was not, I suspect, anything like what she expected to hear from a virtual stranger.
I had three decades of weddings to choose from: myriad displays of spectacle, often of affluence, moments of intimacy between parents and their children, joy and happiness beaming from an ocean of faces, riotous humor and hijinks, weather that included ice storms, torrential rain, flooding and tornadoes, limousine breakdowns, unresolved conflicts between siblings, power plays between mother and daughter...
But one wedding I photographed some fifteen years ago stands above the others. It happened in February, on an overcast Saturday. A thin layer of old snow still covered the ground, heaped into dirty berms along sidewalks and driveways, and a dank, cold wind cut through my coat as I hauled my gear into the church.
Job one: find the bride. She usually arrived first to finish her hair and makeup, then stood like a diver, arms poised over her head while the bridesmaids dropped the wedding dress down over her and tugged it into place. (Or picture a clapper receiving its bell.) After introducing myself to the bridesmaids, I fade into the background and capture candid and fleeting moments; the bride and bridesmaids laughing at some wisecrack, the Bride's mother entering and seeing her daughter, the two of them struggling not to ruin their makeup with tears while their faces quiver...
But this day began differently. Andrea, the bride, asked me to hold off taking photos of her until she was fully laced into her dress. I put this spare time to work in the church, assembling my radio-triggered second flash and placing it in the choir loft. A single flash mounted on a bracket above the camera usually produces photos with dark, sometimes even black backgrounds, a consequence of the inverse-square property, so I routinely use a second, remotely-sited flash to light up the background.
I returned to the bridal room and knocked. A half dozen muffled female voices asked, “Who is it?”
“It's your wedding photographer.”
“Come in, Mike.”
It was Andrea's voice, a calm, pleasant contralto. I opened the door to confront a haze of hairspray, an olfactory battle between perfumes, body sprays and deodorant, and seven young women staring back at me, a man, tuxedo-clad, bearing a black and vaguely sinister-looking mechanism in his hand.
This is a make or break moment. I either present myself in that split second as a stranger who is worthy of trust, ready to listen and collaborate, infinitely confident in my talent and yet accessible and pleasant, or I don't. A roomful of bridesmaids, or groomsmen, will take five seconds at the most to decide if they like me, trust me, and will both work with me when I request it and ignore me when I'm not talking. That second part is every bit as vital. I need to be near-invisible at times. At those moments I take candid photos of fleeting expression and gestures, images that are revelations of character, intimate, honest. When I'm in the zone, these are the images that capture...what? Some truth about the subjects? Something genuine? Whatever you see in the images, they bring tears to the eyes of relatives and friends.
I'd met Andrea and her fiance Dave at my studio a few months earlier. They were already seated when I arrived, and they proved a couple mature beyond their years. Andrea was petite, and perhaps not ideally suited to weathering Wisconsin winters, for she kept her coat on while we discussed their itinerary. As our meeting wound down we shook hands and my office manager stopped by to ask a me question. After a final goodbye to the couple, my manager and I walked into her office. I didn't see Andrea and Dave leave, and I hadn't seen them arrive, two facts with a significance I would only understand later.
Andrea smiled shyly as I entered the bridal room. I shook her hand, smiled, and noted a slight tension in her carriage. Her shoulders seemed a bit tight, drawn up, and my first instinct was that I had interrupted her in the act of reaching for something. She seemed unconscious of her posture. Perhaps the presence of a relative stranger at this moment was a bit intimidating...
I glanced at her dress, then met her eyes. “Andrea, you are gonna floor that guy when he lays eyes on you,” I said.
“You think so?” she asked. I was startled by an undertone in her response. In it was a hope, almost imploring, that what I said was true. Mingled with that hope was a trace of...fear. There was also a tinge of vulnerability. For an instant I was speechless. She really was asking me if she was beautiful. In her face I saw flashes of a girl much younger than the woman I now stood before, then her face, in mysterious flux, became that of a woman again.
“Ohhhhh, yeeaaahhh!” I said. She and her bridesmaids laughed. “Which of you is Bethany?” I asked. Andrea's Maid of Honor chimed, “That's me!” We shook hands and I asked if I could have her help from time to time. She introduced me to the other bridesmaids and I asked them to feel free to offer suggestions for photos.
In hindsight, Andrea was a hub around which everyone else whirled. She scarcely moved a step: her bridesmaids raced to bring others to her side for photos, moved furniture to keep the backgrounds simple, teased her hair. Andrea wore a shy, nervous smile at first, but with a bit of teasing from her bridesmaids and me, she began to beam and to enjoy herself. After some group photos, others of her with each bridesmaid, scores of candids and detail photos, I excused myself to seek out Dave and his groomsmen.
I caught up with Andrea again minutes before the ceremony as she and her father stood in the narthex behind the bridesmaids. The universe conspired to put me there just before she looked at her father. He looked back, and the infinity of feeling in that space broke two hearts in that moment; her father's and mine. But I'd been ready and waiting for this moment, bounced the flash burst off the white ceiling for a soft wash of natural-looking light, and thanked the gods. I was in the zone, could feel it, and knew these families and friends would create many vivid moments. I had no idea what was about to happen.
Walking quietly but quickly up the left-side aisle, I crouched in front of the first pew, photographed a few candid looks between Dave, standing just to the right of the center aisle, and his parents, seated in the pew in front of him. I caught a few more glances from Andrea's Mother, from relatives and the groomsmen, and the processional began.
I rose to take a few candids, then crouched to avoid obstructing anyone's view. One at a time, each groomsman walked down the aisle to meet a bridesmaid at the halfway point and proceed as a couple to the altar. I take several photos of each couple at this moment, in case one or both of them blink, and I scan the first few rows of pews for reaction photos of the families and relatives. Once the wedding party is lined up at the front of the church, I keep a close eye on them, hoping to catch amusing pantomimes or mugging, and I constantly confirm all my camera and flash settings are correct.
The processional music ended, the church fell silent save for the rustling of programs and a cough or two, and the Wedding March began.
Andrea and her father stepped forward as the assembly rose. That moment, had anyone bothered to look at my face, they would have seen a cloud of confusion mixed with surprise. A parade of previous images began to assemble in my mind and assume a new significance: Andrea and Dave sitting at the conference table in my studio, she with her coat on, my manager and I stepping away to converse, which meant that I hadn't seen the couple rise and leave, the slightly off-balance posture Andrea had as I shook her hand an hour earlier, the way her bridesmaids brought everyone to her side for photos, how I chanced to arrive in the narthex only after Andrea and her father were in place.
Now she and her father were approaching the halfway point, and my eyes darted to Dave, gauging his reaction, my mind debating whether to catch a few candids of his face. No, wait, let her get closer. Next I locked my gaze on Andrea's mother, watching for her reactions to the sight of her daughter approaching. Nothing yet. I turned to scan the bridesmaids, then spun and began rapidly taking candids of each one. Almost all of them were in tears, several were wiping their eyes with tissues and two were sniffling. Then Andrea's mother caught the emotional wave and her hands rose to her cheeks.
The groomsmen were all leaning right and standing tiptoe, trying to catch a glimpse of Andrea and her father. Two of them even stepped out of line and ascended the steps to the altar for a better view. A boy, no more than four, peeked out between two pews, caught sight of Andrea and her father, and squealed with delight. Those near him laughed. He turned his head toward the front of the church, and we saw his beaming face. I jammed my lens to full zoom and caught a sequence of his grins as he looked with eyes of wonder at the people who now smiled back at him. He turned away and his tiny hand pointed at Andrea and her father.
Until that moment, the stillness in that church was like none I had ever known, ever felt. I suspect that almost no one heard the processional music. No, their eyes were riveted, like mine, on the young woman walking beside her father, her arm in his.
I turned to catch Dave's reaction to the sight of his soon-to-be-wife. There was something almost electric in his being, a power, a teeming I can hardly describe. I rapidly took several candids and spun toward the center aisle.
Father and daughter moved with a rhythm that some might mistake for a promenade; a stately step forward in unison followed by a pause, then another step. But what almost everyone else present knew, long before I did, was that this was no promenade. I had missed the signs, glossed over the telling details. I hadn't seen Andrea. Not really seen her. With years of experience behind me, I had overlooked what my eyes were free to see if my mind had been open to it.
Andrea stepped forward with her left leg, in unison with her father, paused, then visibly leaned on her father for leverage as she lifted her right leg and used a swinging motion of her torso to launch the right leg forward. Her right shoulder was just noticeably lower than her left, and now, now I saw a deviation in the hourglass form of her dress.
Countless details suddenly added up, shards of glass dancing backwards in time to form a window, whole, faultless, transparent: Andrea had a spinal deformity.
My eyes darted over the assembly. Several people bore looks of...what? It struck me that many in the crowd were willing her forward, their gazes like guy lines. Several older women were weeping openly, dabbing at their eyes with tissues. A few people swayed unconsciously as daughter and father passed.
Andrea glanced at me. I draped my camera and flash bracket over my left forearm, mimed a bouquet in my hands, and moved it lower. She understood and lowered her bouquet. I nodded, smiled, and glanced at Dave in time to see him mouth the word “Wow”.
At this moment I witnessed...I don't quite have the words. Andrea's shoulders rose in response to Dave's mime, her chin dipped slightly, and as she smiled at him all time seemed to stop.
I have lived long enough to witness people departing this life, to sense...something diminishing, some essence dissolve, vanish. I've stayed long enough past that moment to know I was now in the presence of a body, that the person was gone.
Then, too, I have smiled and laughed at a new soul who arrives in this world wrinkled, squirming and disoriented. This new arrival, and the one departing, seem to draw comfort from the presence of others, of witnesses. Or is it they who comfort us?
As I stared down the aisle, as the seconds in this timeless paradox ticked by, I joined the assembly to witness a...vision?
Andrea was radiant. I cannot describe in words what it was that infused her being. She was stunning. She was beyond beautiful. She was awesome, in the way our ancestors understood the word.
Something made me glance at Andrea's grandmother. She was standing next to Andrea's mother. The short, hunched matriarch, her face creased by thick folds of skin, coke-bottle thick glasses hanging by a chain from her neck, wasn't even looking at Andrea. Instead she stared straight ahead, her gaze lowered by the curve of her spine. But...she was smiling, nodding ever so slightly.
She knew.
My mind flashed. This wasn't senility. This woman couldn't see her granddaughter, hadn't been able to physically see her clearly for years. But she knew something, she sensed the arrival of....what? And it gladdened her heart. How did she know? And what did she know?
The omniscient eye would have taken in a sea of faces struck with wonder. Andrea was a hub at the center of some wheel. Dave, when I glanced at him, seemed to sense it too. And to assent...it was that, too, which cemented the memory. This man had stumbled upon a rare essence, embodied in this woman, had an upbringing that allowed him, encouraged him even, to see it, to seek it out, and to join with it, even to serve it.
I can think of only one pitiful word that hints at what I saw in that small, nondescript church on a cold, dreary Saturday afternoon in February years ago.
Grace.
Some convergence of people, circumstances, histories, and a host of other forces I know nothing about, and may never discern, never comprehend, conspired to visit the awareness of a few score humans that day.
My friends and relatives, well-meaning but prone to confusing well-ordered words with knowledge, who know nothing of a knowledge that is present before words, beyond words, even between words, a knowledge that is simply present, independent of the constrictions that language places on thought, have often volunteered explanations to frame this moment in less esoteric terms. I've been lectured about archetypes, hormones, Romanticism, psycho-social contracts, various tendencies exhibited by groups of humans who are primed by socially-constructed expectations...of course, none of my friends and relatives were present that day to witness the moment.
And it passed. Andrea handed her bouquet to Bethany, kissed and hugged her father, Dave shook hands with his soon-to-be father-in-law, took Andrea's hands and looked into her eyes. He then took a very visible deep breath, she stifled a giggle, and they turned to face the minister.
The day continued along a trajectory well known to American families. High emotion, visible joy, bountiful laughter and a run on Kleenex were present and accounted for. Had you been present, you might have found the newlyweds instantly likeable, a bit on the quiet side, considerate, the many moments that ensued heartfelt, humorous, hopeful. And you would have parted company glad to have been present, grateful for the abundance of...what words describe such a gathering of people, and the ambiance they create by their volition and their resolve?
It is this vision, this memory, this knowledge, this awareness that, yes, among the myriad, petty, superficial and transient distractions that attend the forced labor of a market economy, this moment has nourished me as I confront the folly of human avarice, of human aspirations to grandiosity, fawning climbers and boring narcissists, this moment where all the effort I have poured into a strange craft and molded into a career for no sound, sane reason, has borne fruit. It is one small thing I do, for others and for my sanity and peace of mind, and I have seen a glimpse of a greater mystery for having taken this path, and that is enough, more, it is an infinite reward for aspiring to serve others, for taking my place in this mysterious life and living with my eyes open.
“I wish you could have seen them at the moment when he took her hands in his,” I said to Anju and Terry. Tears were welling in Anju's eyes. “Ah,” I said, “You do understand.”
The young man who sat beside her, his soul much older than his years on this Earth, took her hand and said, “It is enough that you told us. Thank you.”
“Not sure I should take you places and let you meet people,” my wife said later as she opened the door to our hotel room, “You can be a bit intense.”
“I thought you liked my intensity,” I said, affecting hurt.
“What were you trying to teach them, oh self-conscious sage?”
“Jane, I had no idea the conversation would take that turn. She asked me a question, that question, and I offered the answer that came first.”
“You enjoyed that question.”
I was silent a moment. “Yes, I did. I really did.” I said. “Why does that feel like an accusation?” My question hung in the air, unanswered, because at that moment Jane shut the bathroom door behind her and switched on the fan.
Later, as we sat in bed reading, I put my hand on her book. “Are you mad at me?” I asked.
Jane, my dancing beauty, my intimate mystery, looked over her reading glasses at me and said, “You didn't think to mention your own wedding day?”
Postscript
No man prompted to speak of his brush with some eternal mystery will know peace until he has first paid homage to the more immediate mystery, that is, the spouse who has consented to share a life, come what may, with him. Had I paused to consider the company I was in, had I given my spouse her due and then mentioned the second most memorable moment...
In my defense, had I not answered impulsively, I may never have had cause to recall that brush with some ineffable power, and to share it with you. It is possible that no one else may have ever asked the right question...
I'll wager that most of you have seen politics in all its guises. I'll also wager that few of you have seen grace. I have seen both. But it seems I am blessed with neither.