Destination Wedding

Take me to the moon!
This is the furthest I have ever gone for a destination wedding. She met "Mr. Right" again. This will be spouse #4. But that month being married to a poet 25 years younger than her doesn't really count, so she would say this is #3. It’s not that I object to changing direction if living together doesn’t feel right. If I were more the marrying type, I'd probably be on my 15th spouse.

Maybe it’s a Hollywood thing. In the movies people fall in love and get married all the time. In a two hour movie, there isn’t time to be married, only to get married. No highly paid screenwriter would start a movie the day AFTER two people got married. When the ceremony ends, it’s time to roll closing credits. Unless, perhaps, they get married on the moon…

They met two years ago when he as 85 and she was 82, at a spiritual retreat at the Apollo lunar outpost. Looking back at Earth from the moon is supposed to change you. Every politician should be required to spend a week on the moon, gazing out a portal at Earth. At least, I imagine doing so would send them back singing “We Are the World” and taking better care of my planet and her inhabitants. Or does a megalomaniac see the whole Earth and dream of conquering it, of owning it all, of turning the skies dark with pollution and cutting down rainforests, like some caricatured villain in a Batman comic book?

Their courtship was a timeless story of young love, but it was acutely not old fashioned. I knew something was up when my normally low tech parent impatiently asked me how to get live holograms working on her netwall. This woman who raised her children B.I. (before there was internet) had holographic virtual sex with he who may be her final husband before they went on a physical, in person date. Daughters get to hear about these things, and provide tech support.

I never expected to get to the moon. It’s insanely expensive, and I’m afraid of heights. But I have also always wanted to look back at Earth. I would not have imagined one of mom’s wedding would get me there. She wins our family’s annual “who can be the weirdest” contest again this year. In a good way, of course. I used to win easily, but these days I rarely even come in second.

Will the view of Earth be as incredible as those who have been in space describe? Will I want to save the world or conquer it? Will I decide to get married on the moon myself a few times? It’s a view I’ve tasted in my mind, at times painting on imaginary rings to rival Saturn’s, firework auroras, and friendly space-faring alien traders visiting in hollowed out canoe space ships. Any moment now, as soon as I dare to turn my head, the mystery of how it will feel to actually see Earth from space will be answered.

Time to roll closing credits.