Getting Ready

We woke up late. It seemed like we had all the time in the world to get ready but after I took a shower it suddenly seemed like we were going to be late. I stayed calm, but Lizy got increasingly nervous. The fact that I was so calm seemed to infuriate her to no end. I assured her we were going to be fine.

And I meant it, until I put on my suit. When I found the suit in my closet it was still in the jacket cover from the dry cleaner. I unwrapped it. It looked like it always did, but when I put on the pants I had trouble zipping them up. I turned to Lizy.

“Did the dry cleaner shrink my pants or did I gain weight?” I asked.

“Oh my god,” she said, “That’s my suit!”

It turns out I had traveled from California with Lizy’s suit, instead of my own and would continue to have to travel around with it for no reason.

Luckily my Dad had a suit that fit me well enough. My mom gave a me a new tie and pocket square combo she had just bought at the Bay.

We still made it to the church with time to spare. We even got a great parking spot right in front of the church. The church was beautiful. It had large stained-glass windows, big wooden beams, and classic church pews. We sat with the North Toronto crowd.

The Ceremony

During the ceremony, the pastor kept stressing how important it was to Eugenia to have a Christian marriage. She didn’t mention if it was important to Bernard.

During a part of the ceremony both sides of the family read passages. Eugenia’s side read a passage from the bible. Bernard’s sister read a passage from Neil Gaiman, the secular science fiction author. It was a blending of ideologies.

At different points in the ceremony there were hymns that we were supposed to all sing. I tried to sing along during the Lord’s Prayer, so that someone would sing in our mostly jewish section, but had trouble following along. Although, Robin, thought I gave such a good effort she gave me a “Yasher Koach”.

At the end of the ceremony, Bernard and Eugenia shared a lingering first kiss as husband and wife. They looked into each other’s eyes and it seemed to me they were deeply in love. As they were leaving the church, Bernard swept her downward as if they were dancing and kissed her again.

As we were walking out of the church, Robin told me, “If only my parents were here they could’ve helped out our group with the Lord’s Prayer. They both were forced to recite in public school. It was in a lot of public schools until the supreme court decision of 1988 banned it.”

There was a group photo taken on a set of steps outside the church. Tirth and I realized we were wearing matching tie and pocket square sets.

Hanging out at Aaron’s Place

Most of the North Toronto crew went to Aaron and Jenny’s place to hang out during the break between the ceremony and the reception. It was great to see everyone. I was especially happy to see Ke, who I hadn’t seen for a long time, at least 10 years, at least since he moved to Australia. I was able to meet his wife, Jamie, for the first time. We used to hang out a lot in high school. We met in Grade 9. We sat next to each other in math class and then we’d walk together to strings class, forging our practice logs on the way there. I really needed the practice. Ke not so much. When I’d play in class the teacher would wince and he would play she would give him a look like he was a virtuoso.

Robin and Alex talked about how they had gone on the UJA walk for Israel that morning before the ceremony. They talked about how they were a little surprised to not see any protesters at the walk (this overlaps with an increase in tensions between Israel and Palestine). Maybe it was too far north for the protesters, Alex suggested. They had moved the walk that used to take place in downtown Toronto to starting around Bathurst and Lawrence and going north.

The reception

We drove down David, Matthew, Medha, Aaron, and Jenny to the reception in my parent’s toyota highlander. Good to get some use out of the third row of seats.

The reception took place at Canoe, a fancy restaurant in downtown Toronto. The appetizers were being served in a hallway between the bar and a big window that looked out onto the lake, the CN Tower, and the TD building.

David looked around and said to me, “I’m going to let you know because I can see you don’t realize. This is a who’s who of Toronto doctors.”

I said, “I’m just reminded of the demographics of our enriched math class in highschool 1/3 jewish and 2/3 asian.”

The appetizer hallway lead into the main dining room for the restaurant. We went to sit down. The North Toronto crowd was sitting at two large tables at the back of the room. At each table setting there was a small gift box containing a pour-over coffee maker and a bag of coffee beans.

There were speeches during the first course. Nathan made a nice speech about what a good friend Bernard was. There were other speeches as well, but the only one I remember with any detail was Bernard’s. He spent a while talking about his parents. How they came to Canada so their kids could have a better life. How growing up they were never rich, but they were never in want. It was the classic immigrant story. Lizy and Terry cried. The story had enough similarities to their own to make them emotional.

My entree was steak and fries. After dinner there was a bubble tea and waffle stand where the hors d’oeuvres were. Then even later in the evening there was fried chicken and lobster rolls.

Lizy and I left a little early since Lizy was feeling tired. I said goodbye to everyone. I told Ke, I’d try to visit him in Australia, so it wouldn’t be another 10 years before we saw each other again.

Lizy commented that there was finally no traffic.

“You know it’s a nice city to drive in if you only have to drive on Sunday’s after 10pm,” she said.