It was Q’s first time south of the equator and he kept obsessing about figuring out whether water goes down the drain in the opposite direction from the northern hemisphere. In the end I don’t think it was ever figured out. We were too busy having a blast.
We stayed in a bunch of amazingly trendy flats in an area of Cape Town called De Waterkant (Afrikaans, and absolutely rude when pronounced properly (duh vah ter kuhnt) to us English speakers!)
Q had a field day with that one! Their website lists the properties as ideal for ‘gay stay’ which was quite far from our agenda, but nonetheless, we found out the area had other ideas… The area used to be quite rough, but has been cleaned up recently and lots of cafes, cute shops and boutique hotels line the streets. The owners are a friendly enough gay couple, who have an array of gay focused brochures and newspapers, and while we sat in the office on a serious note, discussing a potential theft of camera SD cards, I couldn’t help but pick up a copy of the Pink Tongue!!
But I definitely digress.
We went for a wedding and it was a great one. It was all a bit last minute and why not?! Stress shouldn’t be part of the party to unite two souls in my opinion. The day before the nuptials, we were huddled around an ATM en mass, trying to draw enough cash to pay the stubborn wedding planners who told us just then that thy didn’t take credit cards…
On the morning of the wedding, the ceremony was e-mailed to the officiating friend to read and remember, and on the way to the venue with our bride in tow, she let us know she’d forgotten a cake. No worries! We pulled over at a bakery in Simonstown and picked up a cute little chocolate lemon cake, which the wedding venue decorated with flowers and which came in handy later, for bride and groom to cut symbolically together and smear in each other’s faces. All in good fun.
The ceremony itself, at Boulder’s Beach, with the penguins and other visitors to the park as the background audience, was blessed with the best weather in Cape Town one could ever hope for. No wind, lots of sun…
It looked like a movie scene… Our bride looked beautiful. The whole backdrop was surreal. I don't think you could have asked for better.
I volunteered as photographer while JW and our boy's mom sat upfront to proudly ‘give away’ their son. I saved my hugs and pride for later, and wiped away the happy tears from behind my lense…
And the after party put all family differences in the bin, while we bonded and danced and drank and danced some more until it was midnight and the DJ called it a night… I think we could have gone on for hours.
The best part of this trip was seeing all the boys bond. In step-families it can go wrong so easily. It can make life uneasy and put all the relationships on edge. In our case however it has always gone well. Everyone gets along. Everyone accepts and gets on with life. And on this trip everyone had the chance to hang out (which isn't often now that the big boys are scattered across North America and we are here on the dark continent), to support each other, to be proud and to feel the love that family represents. I felt something shift. We’d all become closer. We’d all grown and we’d gained even more respect for each other. And that is good enough for me!
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