| He
pops it in his mouth, and shrugs. "Guess it won’t kill me," he says.
I eat my potato
salad with chopsticks.
The band switches
to traditional Thai tunes. For hours Thai women take turns singing hauntingly,
beautiful melodies into the mike, while the others swirl slowly on the
stage, arms reaching high in the air, fingers curled back. It’s part hula,
part barong - it’s Thai.
Phun pulls
out a chair for me at the table where the elder women of the village are
seated. A woman with the soft skin of an overripe peach looks me in the
eyes and takes my hand. She wraps a string around my left wrist, ties a
knot, and chants softly in Thai.
Translation
unnecessary - she is blessing me, wishing me happiness and good luck. Each
woman around the table repeats the ritual until I have a thick bracelet
of strings knotted around my left wrist. It is their way of connecting
me to each of them and to their community. I am touched and I am crying.
A wedding in
Thailand is a mating dance for all those who’ve not yet found a partner.
I ask 85 year old Jack, a friend of Bob's who has come all the way from
Michigan for the ceremony, "Are you looking for a lady here?" "Yes," he
nods. "Do you have your eye on someone in particular?" "Yes, that one over
there," He points to Joy, who is at this moment leaning into the truck
sized cooler digging out a
beer, her
bottom pointed in our direction. "She turns my crank," he says. Joy noticing
his attention directed at her (never mind the 40 year age gap) comes over
to top his glass with beer.
"You trying
to get me drunk?" he asks. "You can get me drunk and take advantage of
me." Joy drags him off to the dance floor and he spins her around. He returns
to his chair a bit out of breath but grinning from ear to ear.
Hours of eating,
drinking, singing, dancing, and merriment later, Bob and Phun stand together
at the mike and Bob says to the wedding guests:
"Thank y’all
for comin'. It looks like we have about seven countries represented here
today. I guess that means that there’s peace on earth after all. "
Bert, backed
by the band, launches into, "Take me home country road, to the place where
I belong, West Virginia, Mountain Mama, Udonthani, take me home, country
road."
Epilogue
The next afternoon,
Phun's family is packed and ready to return on the all night bus to Chiang
Rai. We gather on Bob’s porch talking as best we can with our three words
in common. Phun's brother, Sinua, is smiling at me. I note his golden brown
skin, Mt. Everest cheekbones, wide-spaced almond eyes, two rows of beautiful
white teeth. Phun’s younger sister suddenly vacates the seat next to him,
and I am stuffed into it. Here we go. They are leaving in an hour, so I
figure there’s no harm in playing along.
Phun says (through
Bob) that she wants me to be her sister in law.
Bob says, "Now
wouldn't that be sumthin’ Robin if you was to come here for our wedding
and you end up finding yourself a Thai husband?" "Yea, that would be something,"
I say. As Sinua boards the bus he turns back and smiles at me one last
time.
I blow him
a kiss and turn to get into Bob's pickup truck which will take he and Phun
home to start a new life together in Udonthani, Thailand, and me to the
train station, which will take me to the Bangkok Airport, which will take
me via plane to San Francisco. Good thing too, or the last line of this
story might be, "I’m living on the Back Forty in Thailand with my new rice
farmer husband. Wish you were here."
Notes:
|
At
9AM, the village women "kidnap" Bob and along with the village elder, escort
him to the house where his bride waits. Before Bob is allowed to enter
his own house, he has to pony up 300 baht and allow the village elder to
pour holy water on his white athletic socks.
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