So they did.

All of their friends and relatives chipped in and signed on for potluck and various responsibilities, and of course, as the day approached, lots of little things went wrong and were forgotten or overlooked. Then war broke out in Europe and people felt a sense of grief and darkness in the world, and in our families tensions flared, and we prayed for good weather and an end to the war. But by March 27, Kosovo was human misery beyond all imagining, and all you could do was send money and pray.

But we all showed up because this is the secret of life, and part of the secret of life is also that it does not make much sense. You feel joy that two kind people have offered each other sanctuary; stunned by images of evil and suffering; relief that good people love you, self-centered mess that you are; animal confusion about our part in destroying lives we are trying to save; and happy happy happy to be flower girl.

On the morning of the wedding I sent money to Doctors Without Borders, and then I put on my party dress, got Sam ready, put a satin lei on Sadie, who was flower dog, and headed to the Stinson Beach home of our friend Mary Turnbull.

The wind was howling when we first showed up. Bright flags snapped in the breeze, and it was so cold at noon that those of us in the wedding party who had assembled early for a rehearsal secretly believed that the day was ruined, that this was a nightmare, cold and awful, and our skin was going to turn purple.

Or at any rate, this is what I secretly believed. No one else actually seemed to feel the day was doomed; everyone else was game, because they knew that along with everything else, weddings are also about mishaps and confusion, and that the other stuff -- the love, the bravery -- would overcome.

And besides, Stevo, in a Hawaiian shirt and a long green garland of leaves draped around his neck, was giving off enough sun to single-handedly illuminate the day. He is nearly 40, 6 foot 4, with dark wavy hair, blue gray eyes, a long nose like Dad's. He has seen Sam nearly every day since Sam's birth. And so for nine years he and Sam have been playing and drawing and chasing each other, playing catch and quibbling and wrestling and building things. Sam calls him "Uncle." I call him "Brotherman." Sam and I sort of feel that we own him, and so it amazes me that neither of us feels jealous of Jamie. We just love her, and she loves us. She thinks we're great.

She is a little younger than Stevo, creamy and dignified and lovely, also tall and big-boned. They have both been sober since the mid-'80s, after years of being lost. When they are together, they look like poster children for a well-run lost and found.

It was to be a luau of sorts, an above-ground luau. A lu-up. Hawaiian kabobs were marinating in the classic English garden in the backyard. Side dishes amassed in the dining room, and chairs were set up on the beach in front of the house. The people in the wedding party wore beautiful orchid leis, and everyone else wore silk leis: purple, pink, red, white, yellow. They were wacky and gloriously tasteless, like paper party hats.

Jamie got ready in a bedroom while Stevo greeted the arriving guests, and wherever he went, light seemed to pour off of him. He was so happy that he looked 15 years younger, as if he had gone backward in time to catch up to the exuberant young self he had once been, before our father died, before a breathtakingly incongruous hitch in the army, before he spiraled down. Sam kept tugging on him, begging him to come to the beach and play, but Stevo gently explained that he couldn't just now, and Sam glowered.

I milled around saying "hello" to people, carrying a large ostentatious basket of rose petals, the largest basket any flower girl in the history of life has ever carried. I also distributed bubbles to all the guests, to blow whenever the spirit moved them. The bubbles came in little plastic containers, some in the shape of churches with stained-glass stickers, some with plastic doves on top. My older brother's wife had helped my mother pick out an elegant Hawaiian dress, and she sat regally in a chair in the sand, waiting for the wedding to begin.

Next page | Launched into the wonderful world of marriage