cimorene

kitten_head, who I used to call my "favourite cousin", is getting married in October.

My mom is the oldest of five kids, and four of them are sisters. My mom's the only one who moved away from her blue-collar Polish Catholic Midwestern roots - all my other maternal aunts and uncles and their collective 11 children still live in the town my grandparents moved to when my mom was in high school. I am one of four girl cousins born between fall '82 and summer '83, one per sister; but I was always closest to

kitten_head because her mom is closest to my mom - my favourite aunt was 2nd oldest, only 1 year younger than Mommy, and our entire childhoods, our families made sure to see each other at least twice or three times a year (in spite of the 8-11 hour roadtrips necessary).

with kitten_head, Petit Jean State Park, Arkansas, 1988?

age 4; age 5; age 12; age 14

An introverted kid more interested in the books I brought to school every day than in other children, not to mention a 2nd-generation sff fan raised firmly in the subculture that brought my parents together (the central tenet of which was calling the uninitiated mundanes. I'm not saying my subculture is necessarily more enlightened than anyone else's) and a politically-conscious liberal child raised in Alabama - well, having a best friend to call my own, a best friend I could always count on but who took up almost none of my day-to-day time - it made a huge difference in my life, and no doubt, my self-esteem. It helped me maintain the sense of not belonging to my surroundings that was so vitally important to me (and which today I maintain much more simply by living in a foreign culture where I can't understand anybody! :D Although my best friends are still in Canada & Holland...).

kitten_head has never been to a science fiction convention, but she adopted her fantasy-centric reading material almost wholly from my [parents'] bookshelves (two glorious summer weeks were spent lying on beanbags in my room, passing Mercedes Lackey novels back and forth as we finished them, when we were nine and ten, after I discovered ML who was guest of honour at BamaCon; then we made Tarma and Kethry costumes out of cardboard and paper and rampaged around the house).

The point is: even though we are as different as day and night in some ways, in other ways we had an unbelievable amount in common, and, well, when someone has been your pal since before your first memory I guess it doesn't really matter how much you have in common.

kitten_head has been the most significant fixture throughout my life aside from my parents. I've been planning her wedding for pretty much exactly the same amount of time I've been planning mine (we used to design costume schemes and colour schemes as we wandered the streets of Hot Springs, our traditional July 4 destination - "It'll be winter and I'll be in WHITE velvet with WHITE fur and my bridesmaids will have GREEN velvet and RED velvet...").

A few years ago I reached the Andy Hurley attitude towards the heteronormative institution of marriage, and also realised how much I would hate planning a gigantic party of that sort. But I'm unreasonably excited that

kitten_head is having a Silver Screen Hollywood themed wedding in a historic theatre, with reproduction 40s dresses in black and white for the attendants. In theory, the vicarious enjoyment should be all I'd ever need, and this is as themey as my ten-year-old self could have planned. Also, I now have a perfect excuse to buy some red vintage-style heels guilt-free.