I’ve been offline for awhile, thanks to a power outage—the result of a hurricane that rearranged my physical landscape, so that it now corresponds to the way I’ve been feeling inside. Gone is the vegetable garden I tended all summer, while the lovely aspen that shaded my hammock now lists at a forty-five-degree angle. Most of my songbird friends have either flown—or been blown—away.
I suppose it could be worse. The Gulf Coast is underwater, the West Coast on fire, with smoke and ash so thick that my son in the Bay Area had to airlift his wife and daughter to safety. He continues to work from home, alone, like Matt Damon under Martian skies.
Alex tells me that one of California’s wildfires is the result of a gender-reveal ceremony gone awry. Which set me wondering, since we don’t have such ceremonies in Utah. In Utah, each newborn is assigned a specific gender at birth, and you’re expected to keep it more or less a secret until your wedding night. As a result, Utah continues to experience more opposite-sex marriages than any other state—pandemic be damned. And last weekend, against the advice of my wife and oncologist, I agreed to photograph one. To make matters even more challenging, the event took place in Utah County—home of Brigham Young University and Utah’s leading coronovirus hot spot.
But I wasn’t worried. The bride’s mother happens to be my dental hygienist, and was practically born wearing a face mask. Likewise, guests were issued face masks and bottles of hand sanitizer at the door. And get this: Even the bride and groom were socially distancing at the altar! Which presents a technical issue if you’re trying to capture the moment with a telephoto lens from a safe distance. Try as I might, I couldn’t squeeze the pair into the same frame—not until the last moment, when husband and wife shared a brief kiss.
Group shots were a cinch, since it no longer mattered whether everyone was smiling. Following the festivities, each guest was offered a box of sweets and a bottle of bubbly—to be enjoyed in privacy elsewhere. Which I did, wishing all along that I could offer a toast to the newlyweds, or perhaps raise a glass to someone in my distended family, in whichever far-flung isolation ward each is currently hiding out.