an ever-expanding family
Today my good friend and brother-in-arms Mark Houck was wed to the most excellent Peggy Varniere in a small ceremony at the courthouse in Grenoble attended by their families.
I wish I could have been there. It is not merely that France is reputed to be a beautiful country for travel, or that I really could use a vacation - for while both are true, my reasons for wanting to have been there are far more personal. The ceremony was attended by family, and after more than ten years of friendship, Houck has certainly earned that title in my home.
He was the first person I actually met on my first day at Grinnell, and with his ubiquitous hat and broad smile, I rather hoped that he would turn out to be my still-missing roommate. No, instead he revealed with an enthusiasm for life that would become familiar to us all that he was from Oklahoma(!), and he essentially ended up living across the hall from me for nearly all four years of our undergraduate education. Houck's insufferable good nature and occasional earnest obliviousness in the face of subtle social faux-pas were the subject of much ribbing over the next several years, but those same qualities led to a steadfast friendship in the face of any obstacle... including his good friend's occasional lapses into melodrama or hyperbole. The Houck ancestral residence also became a home away from home, and a stopping point on the biannual caravan from Texas to Iowa. His family showed incredible generosity to a bunch of indolent and hungry college students, and won our hearts with their baking and love for complicated technological gadgetry. Houck became family, another of the band of brothers who fought through heartbreak and finals stress to graduate somewhere on the other side. Through sadness and joy, Houck stood firm by his friends, and kept them standing upright.
Mark would go on from college to accomplish any of a number of things, the most recent of which was to encounter one Peggy Varniere, lately of France. Her enthusiasm and appreciation for the strange and obscure but wonderful matched his temperament, and after some nervousness and many cups of coffee... the pair fell in love. As Mark is my brother, so Peggy is now a sister.
They are an amazing bunch of folks, and I wish I could have been there to share that afternoon with them. May fortune find your path, Mark and Peggy - and may happiness follow you relentlessly for the rest of your lives.