Not only are we dealing with The Corona and an already-here flu season and flooding and fires and political nonsensical insanity and Me This and Me That and marred monuments and storms going nuts in the gulf, but John Lennon would’ve turned 80 this year, and I have a son getting married in five days in New Orleans, and that trumps everything. No pun intended. Thank you Sr. B for teaching us Mt. Carmel girls what a pun is.

Several of my friends won’t be able to attend the ceremony and/or the reception due to restrictions. Speaking of receptions, we’re having a sit-down-socially-distanced-dinner in a courtyard with no band and limited mingling. There’ll be no dancing to Proud Mary or sitting through She’s a Brick House which I’m forever grateful for. Speaking of music, Jacques and I were asked to turn in a song we’d like to dance to. I listened to The Top 100 Songs from the forties, fifties, sixties, seventies and even the dreaded eighties and nineties. I didn’t dare go beyond that. I told Jacques, “We can’t dance to any of these songs. We won’t be able to stop laughing.”

When I hit the two-more-weeks-till-the-wedding mark my stomach did some somersaults. I’m having high anxiety about everything, including illness and death, and some that are embarrassingly shallow such as my hair and dress and legs. I don’t want to walk down the aisle with people whispering, “Who’s that,” because the hair person thought I should look like I just left Miss Lasseigne’s Beauty Shop on Parkview Drive. I’m also wearing an unforgiving dress that I’m afraid will suddenly be too long or too short or too tight or too loose or I can’t zip it or it falls apart thirty minutes before the wedding, but I’m mostly worried about my little toe. It got into a brawl with a coffee table leg that tore a bunch of things in that tiny lil thing that’s not accustomed to being torn. As of today my calendar says, “Toe Day Seventeen,” and I’m presently being bit by fleas and I have no pets, and Emily just texted a photo of a swollen eyelid.

So not only am I still quarantining but I’m also staying home so I can stay off the toe in order to walk down the aisle with Jacques The Groom. Doctor told me he’d inject it if need be and I’m having anxiety about that on account of the first, and I prayed it would be the last time, I had anything on me injected.

I think I said, “csssssssstttttttt,” for about forty-five minutes to an hour after. I’m also worried that it’ll wear off the second the person in charge says, “Go,” and last but not least I’m also worried about my not tanned legs even though I’ll have on a long dress. My thinking is that a wedding is the most formal occasion ever and I’m sixty-four years old. To all the young’uns out there who don’t read the paper but I’ll say it anyway, hose stands for hosiery which stands for stockings which stands for pantyhose.

I don’t mean to be so dependent but when the clock strikes seven on Nov. 13. I’m begging y’all to light a candle and ask The Blessed Virgin Mary to help me walk the proud walk with my son, because she loved her son as I love mine. You don’t really have to light the candle but if there’s one available it might help.

PHYLLIS BELANGER MATA was born at the old Dauterive Hospital and grew up on Wayne Street. She is a 1974 graduate of Mt. Carmel Academy and is a chili dog “without the wiener” aficionado.