On forbidden cupcakes, overstimulated amygdalae, and the underappreciated art of registering one’s dissatisfaction without making a scene (vol. xxvii, no. 9)

Dear Family,

Attendees of Carrie’s wedding in Portland earlier this month may have heard something about a boorish (and possibly inebriated) guest who, only seconds after being told for the tenth time in two hours that the dessert table was still off limits, angrily thrust his right paw into the center of a large plate of chocolate cupcakes and took one anyway (touching most of the adjoining cupcakes in the process) before marching out in a huff.

If you heard the story and were wondering how much of it is true, let me just say that I was not inebriated.

I was undoubtedly impaired, but for reasons having nothing to do with intoxication.

The 25ish-minute¹ wedding ceremony of Carrie Kent to Joe Bazeghi on Sunday, September 10th, outside the Historic Overlook House in Portland, Oregon, was objectively beautiful. The weather was close to perfect (perhaps a little on the warm side), everyone looked sharp,² and the officiator (the bride’s brother, Rick, who, like all Kent men, is blessed with a soothing, honey-like, bass speaking voice) said all the right things in a timbre that lent a magisterial grandeur to the whole thing.

I wish I had taken note of the vows Joe and Carrie wrote because they were very good. In addition to being thoughtful and meaningful, they had the bonus quality of actually being vows, as opposed to the treacly pap that passes for vows in certain TV/movie weddings where the people getting married express their love in creative ways but don’t actually make any promises. It drives me nuts.³ But Joe’s and Carrie’s wedding vows weren’t like that and made me want to do better at living up to mine. I seem to recall their promising to be “present,” which resonated with me, both because of its importance in so many dimensions and because I’m not always very good at it.

So the wedding was great.

As for the 11 hours of hoopla surrounding the wedding, I’m still searching for the right word. Ordeal isn’t right – too negative. Exhausting is probably the best adjective. Apart from being instructed to arrive at 12:15 for family photos that ultimately weren’t taken until 4:00 (something I’m willing to chalk up to the immutable fact that wedding photographers tend to lack a basic comprehension of how time works while operating blissfully unaware of the reality that most people attend weddings for reasons that have nothing to do with wanting to have their picture taken) nothing about it was objectionable.⁴ It all had a good and happy vibe to it, and everybody else seemed to have a good time.

I am genuinely happy for everybody else.

I enjoy lots of different things. I enjoy all kinds of music and, contrary to popular belief, I enjoy the company of other humans. But I enjoy these things in moderation.

What is moderation? I’m not sure and I guess it depends who you ask. But for me and social engagements, the threshold beyond which “moderation” crosses over into “excess” is somewhere well short of 11 hours.

I have spent what is probably an inordinate amount of time in the three weeks since the wedding trying to think of anything in my life that has lasted 11 hours that I have enjoyed.

Precisely one thing comes to mind: Ironman.

I have completed two Ironman triathlons in my life. They each took me roughly 12 hours, which isn’t particularly impressive, and which I hope to improve upon at some point before I die. But I can honestly write the following sentence with 100 percent sincerity:  

I feel less exhausted after 12 hours of Ironman than I do after 8 hours of wedding festivities.

Why is that? I could write a whole treatise here about introverts and our need for tranquil, minimally stimulating environments in order for our brains to function and how wedding receptions are basically the opposite of that. But I’ll boil it down to this: Triathlons are quiet.

You may find that difficult to believe, particularly if your only experience with triathlon is watching with the crowd at the finish line. But as every long-course triathlete knows, these races serve up hour after hour of nothing but the sounds of the wind in your ears and the pavement under your feet. The only interruptions are the occasional aid station and smatterings of spectators here and there. No music, no earphones (they’re illegal in triathlon). Just pure, unbroken, quiet solitude. For brains like mine, a long-course triathlon is a day of emotional bliss.

It’s the same reason I sometimes feel more recharged at the end of my five-hour temple shift on Saturday afternoons than I do at the beginning of it. There could be a spiritual explanation too, but mostly I think it’s just that the temple is a uniformly quiet place. Often, when I’m between assignments, I just sit in the celestial room and bask in the silence. Before the renovation, the celestial room was so quiet, you could hear the chandeliers tinkling high above. The post-reno chandeliers don’t tinkle, and the most prominent sound now is that of polyester pants and dresses rustling as people walk in and out. Sometimes you can hear people whispering to each other, but not usually. It is a truly wonderful place.

I used to wonder why I prefer funerals to weddings. Now I know: Because funerals are quieter.

So anyway, after five hours at the Overlook House, the festivities migrated a mile and half northeast to the Alberta Abbey, a one-time house of worship that now functions as some sort of bohemian performing arts center.

We arrived around 6 p.m. and waited for whatever came next. While most guests availed themselves of the open bar and taco truck, I meandered over to the dessert table and was repeatedly shooed away by some officious person clad head-to-toe in black. Her attire suggested she was either a caterer or an Antifa activist (or possibly both). This being Portland, I figured it was a 50/50 proposition. I didn’t want to press my luck, and so I complied.

Hours crept by and the venue, which was loud when we arrived, grew progressively louder and (seemingly) more chaotic. My overstimulated amygdala reached its limit. I couldn’t hear the background music anymore. To my taxed brain it had all become just noise. I coped by walking laps from the concert hall to the bar area to the parking lot across the street, up and down the block, and then back inside to the dessert table. I just wanted a cupcake. I felt like if I could just have a cupcake, everything would be okay. They looked so delicious. Unfortunately, the Antifa lady was still at her post telling everyone that no one was allowed to take anything from the table “until the bride was able to see it.”

Wait, what?

That’s what we’d been waiting for? That is why I had been denied cupcakes for two hours? Because some busybody felt it necessary for the bride to see the table first?

I am reasonably well acquainted with the bride (having been married to her sister for nearly 30 years). I can assure you that there is nothing on earth this particular bride could have possibly cared less about than what the dessert table looked like. She would have been mortified to learn of this atrocity being committed in her name by an Antifa terrorist. And because the bride is a kind and generous person, I’m certain she would have had compassion on me and insisted that I eat all the cupcakes I wanted.

Armed with this knowledge, I stood there for a few moments and fantasized about how immensely satisfying it would feel to flip the table over.

But then I wouldn’t have gotten any cupcakes ever.

And so instead I took the passive-aggressive route, as is my wont. I reached in and grabbed one of the least accessible cupcakes, disturbing two or three of the surrounding cupcakes in the process, and walked out of the Abbey, never to return. Hannah told me later that the Antifa lady (Hannah didn’t call her that⁵) stared daggers at my back all the way out the door. Good. Exactly what I was hoping for.

Given my impaired state, I think I comported myself reasonably well. I didn’t yell or swear or make (much of) a scene, even though all those things crossed my mind. I ate the cupcake in the parking lot across the street so as not to draw further attention to myself. It must have been gluten-free because it tasted like a handful of dirt, but the frosting was okay.

I am given to understand that the party went on for another three or four hours. I’m sure it was awesome. 

At 4:15 the next morning, while the neurotypical party lovers were presumably sleeping, I was out on a run – recharging my drained emotional batteries by drawing on the restorative power of downtown Portland’s empty, pre-dawn streets. I ran along the Willamette (“Willamette” rhymes with “dammit”) River, crossed it twice and only got lost once. All was right with the world again.

By 6:30 a.m. we had returned our rental car and by 8:30 we were winging our way back to D.C. (via Oakland for some reason). 

Ari, Crystal, and I were not in Portland long enough to experience much of it, but it was pleasant enough. We stayed in an Airbnb – a great old house a few blocks from Laurelhurst Park – and were joined there by Hannah and Emma, who flew up from Salt Lake. They are lovely as ever and it was wonderful to see them. They gave us Voodoo donuts as we parted ways – a kind gesture that almost made me forget my dessert nightmare from the night before.

All in all, it was a fun little cross-country weekend jaunt and I am grateful to have been invited to the wedding. I love Crystal’s family and appreciate their willingness to tolerate my various annoying idiosyncrasies lo these many years. I hope Joe discovers them to be as welcoming as I have.

Ari

Ari continues to be an almost 24-year-old perpetual motion machine, bouncing from one crafty project to the next when they’re not at work (which they also enjoy). You can read all about it in the latest issue of Ari’s Epistolarius: 

Oh, and because Ari posted it at the same time as the latest issue, here is the second-latest issue of Epistolarius:

Sophie

Sophie’s journey to becoming an English teacher has her taking an “Exploration of Teaching” course, in which she has been engaging in “classroom observance,” by shadowing a middle school teacher in Spanish Fork several times each week. She seems to enjoy this. 

Sophie also enjoys her Young Adult Fiction course even though it is requiring her to read something like 30 books this semester.

When Sophie’s not reading books, she’s helping to assemble them at her job in the BYU Bindery.

You can read all about Sophie’s exploits here:

As I write this, Sophie is also finishing her September letter. (It probably does not surprise you to learn that this makes me very happy. When it’s posted the button below will link to it. Until then, it won’t link to anything 🙁

Grace

Grace’s various Instagram feeds remain the best way of keeping tabs on her. They tell the story of a girl who appears to be enjoying her first month away from home at college.

She is adjusting to life at a small school in a small town. “I feel like I see the exact same people every single day,” she says. Fortunately, she seems to like all of them.

Grace wants to be a music teacher when she grows up. Her schedule includes rehearsing with two different choirs, a voice lesson, a musicianship class, and probably one or two more traditional academic subjects that I don’t hear as much about.

Lucky for me, the president of the university is an old friend of mine and he sometimes sends pictures to reassure me she’s doing well.

Crystal

Crystal’s never-ending juggling act balancing the demands of her middle school students with high-functioning autism, her pursuit of a master’s degree, and her responsibilities as our ward’s Relief Society president continue to astound me. Is also makes me feel a little guilty for how little I do in comparison. (But not guilty enough to actually do anything about it.)

It occurred to me that this was the first September since the turn of the century that I didn’t have a back-to-school night to attend. I thought about it last week as I lay in bed alone waiting for Crystal to come home … from back-to-school night — her second as a teacher. I think she genuinely enjoys her job. She really does love those boys (and the one girl) in her program. Her life would make for a far more interesting letter than mine does. But where would she find the time?

Love,
Tim

1. I didn’t actually time it, but it felt like a 25-minuter
2. Everyone in the wedding looked sharp, as did many of the guests. Some of the guests…well, let’s just say a lot of the guests looked like they may have been from Portland.
3. “A declaration of love is not a vow,” Crystal has heard me shout at the TV on multiple occasions. “A vow is a promise to do something!” Pledging to love someone for the rest of your life is a vow. Listing all the reasons you find someone lovely at this moment is not.
4. Just to be clear, “Nothing about it was objectionable” is basically the highest praise I can heap upon any wedding reception.
5. Hannah’s political ideology is somewhat more closely aligned with Antifa’s than mine is