It's all in the family

On a blustery weekend last fall, we went to a wedding on my husband’s side of the family, and as we waited for the ceremony to begin, something felt off. I couldn’t figure out what it was until the bride’s sister lit a series of delicate aisle sconces with a long, gold taper. And then it hit me.

No one in my family would do that – because someone else in my family would have crushed the dainty aisle sconces before the bride’s sister could get to them.

You see, I come from a family of klutzes. Pick an event, any family event, and somebody will fall, wipe out the buffet, hit another family member's car (Wrecks have happened on several occasions actually. We should phrase invitations: Come to the Fox Family Reunion. Bring your insurance card).

So weddings are always interesting. My brother was married in a lovely historic church in St. Louis. It had just undergone a restoration and had new everything. The caretakers obviously didn't know my family's history or they never would have let us set foot inside the place.

During rehearsal, they showed us a lovely table – original to the church –where the communion wine would be placed. To complicate matters, they wanted the table in the middle of a long aisle, surrounded by my family members. My soon to be sister-in-law protested. She’d been to enough Fox events to know what she was dealing with. Besides, the table was old, valuable and it had very thin legs. The wedding planner – who we likened to the blonde cheerleader in every horror movie who has to go outside to see what that noise is – disregarded sister-in-law’s concerns about her new family.

We took bets on who would accidentally knock over the crystal decanter first. I was especially concerned, given I had to walk past the delicate table, in a powder pink bell-skirted dress. You just don’t know what the clearance will be on an outfit like that. Thank goodness my cousin, Matt, got to it first. He was an usher, leading people to their seats. Before the ceremony even began, he backed into the table, breaking the crystal pitcher and soaking the new church's carpeting in wine.

Matt was embarrassed to say the least. I'm ashamed to admit that the rest of us were a bit relieved. We knew someone would "Fox-up" that day, and at least it wasn't one of us. Besides, the table survived. That’s success in our book.

So it was no surprise a few nights ago, on Christmas eve, when my uncle took out our next door neighbor’s mailbox. The hard part was acting surprised in front of our kind and understanding neighbor. You don’t want ot be too blasé about these types of things. But luckily, we Foxes carry plenty of insurance. My uncle is good for several mailboxes and truthfully (speaking for the rest of the clan) we were each glad it wasn’t us. At least not this time…