The zither man smiled at me, shaking his head. “That’s not for us to think about, Son of the Bride,” he gently informed me. We had arrived at the wedding tent in my grandmother’s garden. Those stone sparrows, unmoving on the rim of the birdbath, gave no indication that they’d noticed the bustling activity in the backyard of the Front Street house. Out on the croquet court, the caterers had already lit a cast-iron barbecue as big as a small car—beside it was a wheelbarrow full of briquettes. The caterers were worried about the weather forecast: late-afternoon or early-evening thunderstorms were predicted for the New Hampshire seacoast. If they could serve the food in the wedding tent before the rain started, it wouldn’t matter if the rain put out the fire in the barbecue.

“I just don’t want to be flippin’ burgers with a metal spatula when there’s lightnin’ strikin’ the whatchamacallit,” the barbecue chef said to my grandmother.

“The croquet court,” Nana reminded him.

Crawling around the big barbecue, on all fours, was the infantile Principal Brewster. He was not yet wearing his father-of-the-bride clothes, only his diaper. Dottie was in charge of him, keeping him away from the fire.

“Why is Granddaddy on his hands and knees?” I asked my grandmother.

“The principal emeritus has picked today to stop walking and start crawling—he has regressed past toddlerhood,” my grandmother said. I was wondering how the father of the bride could manage to hand over my mother to the snowshoer on all fours, but Nana must have read my mind. “Your grandfather can still stand, Adam—he only crawls when he wants to go somewhere, or leave somewhere.”

As for the procession down the aisle to Wagner’s “Bridal Chorus,” the decision had already been made not to allow the infant emeritus to escort the bride. Little Ray would be escorted by my uncles. The diaper man, positioned between Dottie and my grandmother, would be waiting for my mom at a safe distance from where the snowshoer would be standing; my grandfather believed the little groom to be another of Ray’s illegitimate children.

“A little unusual, maybe,” Uncle Martin had admitted.

“But a necessary precaution, perhaps,” Uncle Johan had chimed in. Ominously, I thought, my aunts had said nothing.

I saw that the edelweiss man had located the small table with the single chair in a strategic corner of the tent. He had placed his holy instrument on the table and was checking out the microphone and amplifiers. The minister from the Congregational Church came early. He may have been a lot less religious than other Protestants, believing next to nothing, but he had plenty of opinions, which he hastened to express to my grandmother. The front row of folding chairs, already unfolded and gathered in place for the marriage ceremony, should not be too close to where the bride and groom would say their vows.