The Crying Room

If the church was built for the Father and the Son, then within that structure, the crying room was built for Daddy and the Dude.

Last weekend, the Dude was tapped to don a tux and be the ring bearer for his aunt’s wedding. As anyone who has ever been to a wedding can attest, the sight of a little guy in a tux walking down the aisle is always a highlight. In fact, for my own wedding, we had no younger family members and I considered hiring a child actor for just this purpose. Supermommy quickly dismissed my ingenious idea, just as she dismissed (rightly so in retrospect) all of my genius wedding planning ideas (hook up an iPod instead of hiring a DJ or having waiters walk around with trays of Pigs in a Blanket throughout the reception and not just during the cocktail hour).

Lately, our churchgoing as been, ah, slightly inconsistent. Okay, we haven’t gone since the Dude’s baptism. But, to be honest, the Dude does not like to sit still unless a Pixar film is on the television. So, I was worried about what the Dude would do when he walked down the aisle. Temper tantrum? Loco legs? Sit down in the middle of the aisle? Point at his lower half saying, “Poo-poo, poo-poo!” to the congregation?

Supermommy was a bridesmaid and she walked the Dude down the aisle, and by all accounts, he did a good job, and everyone oohed and aahed at him because a little boy in a tux is undeniable.

Once he had finished his walk, he was passed off to me sitting in the pew for the duration of the wedding, while Supermommy took her place with the rest of the bridesmaids.  Now the real work (for me) began, because no matter how cute the Dude in his tux was, his time to shine was over, because THE WEDDING IS ABOUT THE BRIDE, ALWAYS. My job was to stop the Dude from even attempting to steal attention away from the bride on her big day during the ceremony. No cute baby jabbering, no dancing, no waiving at everyone, and most importantly, no crying was allowed.

I was armed with all the Dude’s favorite things: his binky (or pacifier-jeez, that’s a whole blog post in of itself), his blanket-dog (a little blanket with a dog head on it, this isn’t rocket science, folks), his stuffed bear, and some other assorted toys and books. I wore a pocket watch too, because, to paraphrase Doctor Who, pocket watches are cool. But the real good stuff was the camera and my cell phone.

Most little kids born in the last few years have hardcore cell phone addictions. Face it, they see their parents on them all the time, they look shiny and cool, and they make all sorts of fun noises. And to repeat, they see adults on them ALL THE TIME.  And they aren’t fooled by the imitation toy versions. They want the iPhone. The Dude can do the touchscreen “slide open to unlock” trick and also send a text. Steve Jobs in his evilest world domination fantasies could not indoctrinate a future generation of consumers as thoroughly as the child’s own parents.

So I let the Dude sit on my lap and push as many fun touchscreen buttons on my phone as he wanted (he managed to delete all my contacts) while the ceremony went on. The second he made a peep; I popped the binky in his mouth like plug, and he was quiet and content for the first twenty minutes of the mass (Catholic weddings last a long time).

As a side note, if you watch enough weddings in TV and movies, you’d know that the two most important and dramatic moments are 1. The personally written vows that the married couple spend an inordinate amount of time worrying over and 2. The bit where the priest/minister asks, “Does anyone in the audience know of a reason these two should not be joined in holy matrimony?” and everyone looks at the groom and then scans the bridesmaids, then looks behind them to see if anyone is going to burst through the door and race down the aisle (I dream of witnessing this one day in addition to it’s cousin the racing-through-the-airport-to-stop-a- boyfriend/girlfriend-from-making-the-biggest-mistake-of-his/her-life-by-getting-on-that-plane-and-dropping-their-luggage-and-running-up-to-each-other-kiss-while-everyone-claps-move).

But, spoiler alert, none of those things actually happen during a Catholic ceremony. No personal handcrafted vows are said and the priest doesn’t ask the congregation for any damning evidence about the couple. The church might have to return the check if the wedding doesn’t go through, and that is definitely NOT going to happen. Plus the priest might want to hit the open bar at the reception.

At the first sign of struggle, I was instructed to whisk the Dude away and take him to crying room.  The Dude started getting wiggly during a strangely jazzy piece of music played for a responsorial. Then when he nearly dialed the mother of the bride, I figured the time had come. Off the crying room we go!

We joined his older (by two weeks) cousin who was the flower girl and her dad already ensconced in the crying room. They were supplied with more toys and all the cookies they could eat (the Dude took this as challenge) and all the stacked plastic folding chairs they could climb (ditto).

There’s an old saying in the Catholic Church, I think it was first said by Pope Pious XII, but I’ll translate it for you from the original Latin, “What happens in the crying room, stays in the crying room.”

We’ll never know quite how soundproof those walls were, but for the rest of the ceremony, the focus was on the bride (and groom okay).

And the children were seen and not heard.