The Winter Wedding

While I drove across the hoar-frosted plains of Saskatchewan on Boxing Day, finally arriving at a hunting lodge near Archerwill, the red hot Dallas Mavericks scored a three point win over the New Orleans Pelicans, despite force-of-goddamn-nature Anthony Davis putting up 32 points and 18 rebounds for New Orleans. The Clippers beat the sneaky good and finally relevant Sacramento Kings by nine, but by this time, I was cracking some of Blake Berglund’s generously donated Labatt Lite and Calgary Lager. Funny that Saskatchewan has a Calgary Lager that’s quite popular, while we here in the great hub of the prairies are still smashing Kokanees, but that’s a whole other thing. There are only so many things I’ll skip a 32-point Anthony Davis game for, and the wedding of Melanie Hankewich and Blake Berglund certainly made the list.

The lodge is a labour of love for its owners, and the effort they’ve put in to building such a nice gathering place, accented with elements that would make any outdoor enthusiast, or farmer, or cowboy feel immediately cozy and comfortable. There were DVDs (yes they still exist) with titles like “Clucking 24/7”, and other that suggested this might be the kind of thing traditional outdoorsy type put on late at night in place of pornography.

The wedding rehearsal had gone off without a hitch, I was told, and the next day’s feast was being prepared. A near full produce section greeted my eyes as Blake opened the fridge to show me the variety of fresh meats and cheeses he and Melanie chose as holy-shit-that’s-only-the-appetizer for their wedding dinner.

Made the rounds and ran into old pals like Steve Leidal, Eris Roth, the groom’s sister Casey Berglund, and reacquainted with the rest of Blake’s family, whom I’d met a few years earlier at Christmas, at the family farm in Kennedy, Saskatchewan, while travelling home to Manitoba. The bride was busy most of the evening, and visiting with her friends and family. It was nice to see Melanie so relaxed while so much was going on around her. I have a tendency to see a full party happening even when one isn’t, so I was up past everyone else’s bedtime, and made one attempt to write at a late stage of the evening. I got a few lines out, that eventually ended up being more lyric than prose, so I closed up the evening glow and headed off to bed.

A few hours tend to be more than enough sleep when there’s excitement in the air, and I woke to waffles and coffee and bacon, along with the buzz of morning activity. Melanie’s niece Chloe had been batting the balls around on the burgundy clothed pool table, so, having been something of a shark in my high school years, I offered to show her how the game was played. We racked up in barroom 8-Ball style, and I made an attempt to show Chloe how to bridge her front hand for maximum control of the cue. She tried a few different grips, both left and right-handed (I began to assume she was a lefty, as it was her go-to), and at first made a nice bridge, before abandoning it for her own personal style, which was more akin to left wing for the Oilers. I made a few balls off the the first few shots, but I’d gotten a little ahead of myself, and Chloe, for all her 7 years, made things very difficult. I was often hooked around her object balls, and only a real big shot could have made much hay with that particular field. Eventually I closed it out, but a barroom might have taken exception to the length of the game, although they might demure having noticed the precocious adorability of my opponent.

As we all got ready for the afternoon’s proceedings, I got showered up and dressed in a sensible grey suit, blue shirt and navy tie. Not quite James Bond, but getting ever closer. Manitoba singer-songwriter Del Barber and I drove off in his Toyota quarter ton, missing nearly every possible turn on our way to Nut Lake Lutheran Church, about 15 kilometres from the lodge. I’ll admit that the balmy winter Calgary’s experienced so far this year, despite my daily work outdoors, has made me a bit soft to the what’s really considered a seasonal average temperature on the prairies, and thin-yet-very stylish threads don’t quite keep the legs as warm as they do fashionable.

The prairie afternoon sun, above a blue sky with sheeted white clouds, beat through the windows of the church, which required no further illumination. Del and I took seats near the back of the church, and sat while the band, which included Regina heavies Steve Leidal and Jeremy Sauer, with Kyle, Saskatchewan’s Bryce Lewis on guitar and Calgary bassist Elizabeth Curry, played some easy going instrumental versions of country classics, and I’ll admit, it was the first time I’d heard “Hey, Good Lookin’” in a church. Melanie would later remark that she and Blake now had a band of stepchildren, as Sauer and Curry have backed Mel for years, as Leidal and Lewis have for Berglund.

Jack and Theresa Berglund escorted their eldest son to the altar, where he was joined by his brother Jarid, and sisters Jody and Casey. Blake was smartly dressed in a cowboy’s tux, a brown blazer over some Wrangler trousers, and a pair of sharp brown loafers. I’m not gonna lie, I thought about wagering on Blake and Melanie’s sartorial choices with Del and Colter Wall over Twitter acouple days earlier. I have a tendency toward irreverence, and thought that Blake and Melanie might go the extra mile and turn up in fully Nudie’d one piece denim, dyed black for him and white for her.

Melanie’s brother Mark and his partner Jill, and their daughter Chloe, the budding pool shark, entered, before Melanie, and Mark took his place standing next to the altar where Melanie would take her vows. Melanie walked the aisle to the classic “Tennessee Waltz”, accompanied by her grandmother Laila Sadie Johnson, of Tisdale, the same Laila Sady Johnson recently immortalized on Melanie’s excellent record Malice, Mercy, Grief + Wrath. Melanie wore her hair in an elegant ’60’s bob-and-drop, and her dress fit with a classic style as well, a Swinging London dress in a subtle off-white. Blake and Melanie had managed to nearly match the Nut Lake Lutheran Church with their attire, and now, I can’t help but assume that was intended as well.

These small touches weren’t lost on me, nor was the attestation at the beginning of the ceremony, that this marriage was taking place on Treaty Land. It’s a small thing, but significant in a place like the rural Canadian prairies, where all too often we hear stories of a lack of acknowledgement for our First Nations neighbours. Blake and Melanie’s wedding was to be a tying of both traditional and spiritually progressive knots. Casey Berglund offered a wedding blessing that asked for all of the guest in attendance to pass Blake and Melanie’s wedding rings from hand to hand, nestled at the bottom of a dish like a flower in bloom, one golden ring sitting comfortably inside the other, and to let our best feelings and wishes be passed onto the rings. Del leaned over to me and whispered, “Don’t. Drop. Them.” I had to stifle a laugh, and whispered, “Definitely thought that.”

The time it took for the rings to weave their way through the crowd gave me a moment to think about the time I’d spent with Blake and Melanie. I’m certain I met Blake the same summer he met Mel (2013?), and later the following spring, met Melanie when they were touring through Edmonton at a small house concert at my pals Zach and Steve’s house, and got on as well with her as I had when Blake and I met. Some things are Kismet. I thought about all the miles I had logged being pals with these guys, and the near annual Christmas hangs since, as I’d be driving home to Manitoba. I thought of how many hours Blake and I have spent on the phone, talking about music, and business, and the increasing complexity of balancing artwork and careerism. I thought of the first time I heard Realms, driving from Fort McMurray to Edmonton, and to Malice, Mercy, Grief + Wrath, shortly before Melanie released it, and how proud I was that my dear friends, who’d always treated me as a valid artist in my own right, had created something so definitive of the points they were at in their lives. I considered the miles that Blake and Mel have done together, as musical and loving partners. None of this was lost on me, as I often think of things as part of a grander ideal, than just the present here and now. As I held those rings, I wished that all the work Blake and Melanie had done to be compatible and loving with each other continued, and their love and partnership would only grow in the years to come. I made the clean handoff to Del, and breathed a small sigh of relief.

Melanie’s brother Mark gave a solemn, and heartfelt speech about the significance of the Nut Lake Lutheran Church to the Hankewich and Johnson families. Every wedding, every baptism, every funeral, the Johnson and Hankewich families’ stories were inextricably linked to that one church. There was nothing without meaning in the ceremony. It was my kind of ceremony, with layers that only became clear as we passed through that time, as the depth of the commitment Blake and Melanie have made to each other became more and more apparent.

Blake and Melanie were asked individually to hold each other’s hands in their own, and consider that these would be the hands the held them in beautiful moments, in passion, in hard moments, in grief, and through the work that they would make of their lives together. As  they looked into each other’s hands, their partner’s gaze never left their eyes. Symbolism matters, but sometimes it’s something as small as the callouses and lines on your lover’s hands that’ll tell you how hard they’ll work to make the whole thing work.

Blake and Melanie were pronounced husband and wife, and exited the chapel to the Randy Travis classic “Forever and Ever, Amen”, written by Paul Overstreet and Don Schlitz, and performed at the ceremony by Saskatchewan country artists Jess Moskaluke and Chris Henderson.

Back at the lodge, we all had an opportunity to hang out, and await the bride and groom’s return, while feasting on the previous evening’s labours: a charcuterie board 8’ long by 2’ wide, stacked 6” high with meats, cheeses, fruits, olives, and breads. It was a work of art, and by God we all made very short work of it. It was a beautiful idea, rather than a staid, sit down dinner (which are very nice), it was more like an industry greeter: a proper, civilized beginning to a nice evening of drinks and reverie. The band played on, dropping instrumental version of more country classics, and for the second time (the first was in the church, where I wiped my brow that they were playing instrumentally with its references to cocaine and cheating, and the devil pinball) Blake’s “Pretty Good Guy”. Blake and Melanie arrived, in matching fur coats that made them look like the western versions of Supafly, and I could not love those coats any more, even now. Blake and Melanie took over on stage, and led the band through the first number of the night, the Kenny Rogers/Dolly Parton classic, “Islands In The Stream”. They ran through a number of tunes from their respective catalogues, including the excellent “Laila Sady Johnson Wasn’t Beaten By No Train”, and the instant classic “Is It Cheatin’?” from Malice, Mercy, Grief + Wrath, and the third (and not yet final) run through of “Pretty Good Guy” from Blake’s Realms. Meagan Nash followed Blake and Mel with a note perfect take on Patsy Cline’s “Walking After Midnight”, and singer-songwriter Kara Golemba, with her lovely, dusky vocal timbre, led the band through a subtle, even more gentle version of the Glen Campbell & Bobbie Gentry classic “Gentle On My Mind”. I kind of lost track of the music in my socializing after that, though Chris Henderson did pull off a pretty fun Blake Berglund impression at the end of the night. Sometimes, a wedding party needs to feel bit like a roast.

Blake and Melanie, ever aware of the happiness of their families, knew that Chloe’s birthday would be on the 29th, so they provided a piñata for Chloe, and Blake’s young nephews Tucker, Clyde, and Luke to bash away at. All the kids took a few swipe at the blue cardboard dinosaur, in the hopes that it’d become an exploding fountain of candy. Blake, not quite cognizant, or just far too willing to help, held the beleaguered dinosaur with his left (for a guitar player, the important one) hand while Chloe, blindfolded, took huge Joe Carters at the poor thing. Blake, perhaps realizing his precarious position, gave Chloe the option of taking the blindfold off and whaling on the dinosaur while it writhed in agony on the floor. And Chloe did whale, with the zeal and enthusiasm that is universally reserved for little girls on their birthdays. Chloe, the cataclysmic meteor, bashed the poor blue dinosaur until its extinction provided a fortune in fruity Tootsie Rolls, hard powdered suckers, and candy bracelets that I haven’t seen since the old nightclub days.

I’ve gone pretty long with this. Maybe I thought the story would be shorter, but I also care a lot about Blake and Mel. They’ve supported me since the minute I met them. They’ve always made me feel like an artistic peer, even through the past several years where my business hasn’t been nearly as productive as my mouth has. Their work as artists and businesspeople has pushed me to examine how I can make a small space for myself as an artist. Blake was one of the first people I asked about the idea of me moving to Calgary. Blake and Melanie arranged a surprise party for me and Jobi last year, having us all meet up at their place in Regina, after Jobi and I hadn’t seen each other in far too long.

I think a lot about love and partnership, and these days, things are a lot clearer to me than they’ve been in a long time. Often, the initial fire of love isn’t based on a solid foundation of honesty and openness and vulnerability. You try to hide some of the more challenging aspects of your personality from someone you really like, and it’s only later when those things come out that your partner has to decide whether they’re going to be able to accept that. Blake and Melanie toured together so much, and that amplifies the little things that can annoy you about someone, especially in a confined space. They worked through that, and it became an enduring and critical piece of the foundation of their love. When you know you love someone, and have been honest and accepting of their flaws, and they of yours, that’s when the deeper companionship happens. Or so I’ve been told. I’ve mostly only witnessed it, as my own unwillingness to be emotionally available and vulnerable has often broken my relationships before I could ever find that companionship. I suppose it makes it easier to see what’s missing when you get the opportunity to witness the work up close. If anything Blake and Melanie Berglund’s wedding, and their friendship has helped me crack my armour. It’s about time. I’ve missed far too much.