In grade school I caught the bouquet at my uncle’s wedding and this doily was wrapped around the flowers. I clearly remember the moment: I was so intent to catch the flowers when they were thrown and I did so by a fluke, they were thrown from a balcony and hit a beam, thus not going very far but falling to the front where I was standing. My excitement was soon ruined by my older sister who told me that another woman sitting at our table caught the flowers when she was my age and that she had never gotten married; she said the same thing would happen to me. I also remember feeling guilty about catching them because I had the feeling that bride wanted someone else to catch them. So what started out as exciting ended with me in tears.
I don’t think I kept this doily ostensibly to remember this now tragic-comic story from my childhood. I kept it because I saved most everything during the first twenty years of my life. I also rather like it as an object and always have. It looks very old and there is this sort of violent cut and stain in the middle where the stems of the flowers were placed. I have had it for so long (it resurfaces every few years, kept in no particular place) that it would never occur to me to throw it away even though I clearly do not “need” it. It not only reminds me of that memory but also what became of the marriage, which ended in divorce, despite the very extravagant wedding. For me, this object represents expectations and reality, transience and permanence, chance and fate.
- Anonymous Gifter
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