A Royal Wedding

"Are you going to get up early to watch it?" Nancy, one of my co-workers, asked.

It was the upcoming royal wedding between Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, and the group of co-workers answering phones at our end of the phone room had been talking about it most of the morning between calls.

I answered no, 4:30 A.M. was too early to get up for anything not absolutely necessary.

For most of that week, it seemed that everyone was talking about the upcoming wedding. And who could blame anyone? Prince Harry was marrying an American who was biracial, divorced, and had worked as an actress. The last time a British royal married an American divorcee was was King Edward VIII in 1936 ("Cheers, Prince Harry! But the last time a British royal married an American, it didn’t go well."), and it cost him the throne; Edward was given the choice of marrying "that woman," as socialite Wallis Simpson was known, or staying on the throne.

For the record, Edward abdicated the throne and married Simpson, allowing his brother George to become king.

But that was more than eighty years ago. Times have changed. Besides, Harry is officially sixth in line for the throne, after his father, older brother, his nephews and niece. So there is no chance (or very little) that he would be given the choice of love vs. throne.

Part of me wanted to watch the wedding. I'd watched Prince Charles's and Princess Diana's wedding back in 1981, and while I hadn't watched William and Kate Middleton's wedding, I'd seen the photos and news stories in the days before and after. I mentioned that to Nancy.

"Diana looked so scared when she married Charles," Nancy said, and I'd agreed. But while Diana had looked a little unsettled, Kate had seemed joyous. Meghan seemed to be following in Kate's footsteps: happy, confident, excited.

The morning of the wedding, I'd gotten up at 5:00 to make sure my son M. was awake. He works on Saturdays, and usually gets picked up by his ride a little after 6:15. I then went back to bed, with my alarm set for six. (I have to run interference so our black cat, Karma, doesn't make a break for it. While he no longer seems to want to run the neighborhood, he still tries to head for the door, just to let us know he's still the boss.)

After Matt left, I went back to bed. But within half an hour, he was calling to ask me to look up something for him on the computer.

Darn, I thought. No going back to sleep for an hour or so...

By this time, it was almost 7:00, so I stayed up, fixed some coffee, and turned on the TV. The wedding was on, so I watched.

My daughter, M.H., and granddaughter had driven to a restaurant that was going to have a party to watch the wedding. But as luck would have it, the only available table left was outside on the sidewalk - with no chairs. So much for hanging out at the wedding party.

I watched through the lovely wedding (it really, really was quite lovely!), and actually enjoyed it. (Yay, Harry! Yay, Meghan!)

Later, after I'd turned off the TV, M.H. and G.H. stopped by. They'd ended up having breakfast at a restaurant that my other half and I'd eaten at years ago. It had been a nice Mom-and-Pop place when we'd gone there, open until 8 P.M during the week, serving home-style food. Now it closes around 2 P.M. and, from what I'd heard, is not nearly as good as it once was (it's no longer run by the two brothers who opened it).

"How was it?" I asked, when M.H. told me where they'd eaten.

"Not that great," I was told. "The food wasn't all that great, and the waitresses all looked sad."

I couldn't help but wonder why.

But for the rest of the day, while running errands, checking out some art at the Safety Harbor (Fla.) Museum and Cultural Center, where my daughter had sold a painting (yay!!!), and just hanging out, it seemed everyone mentioned the wedding. And while I hadn't planned to watch any of it, I'm glad I got to see at least part of it.