By Erica Mosca
My partner and I woke up Sunday morning and decided it was time.
Within 10 hours we transformed our front yard into an engagement photo backdrop, I ordered 2 different romper wedding dresses in 2 different sizes and used my non-profit management skills to create an invite on Canva, a RSVP link on Google forms, a registry on Honeyfund and got a wedding venue booked on Zoom.
Surprisingly not many people have asked us why.
Nick, my partner, is an enlisted orthopedic surgical technician stationed at Nellis Airforce Base in Las Vegas, Nevada recently turned into hospital entrance symptoms watch guard. I started and run a non-profit organization called Leaders in Training in East Las Vegas that empowers students to become the first in their family to graduate from college and more importantly become the next-generation of diverse leaders who change the world.
We are both lucky to have jobs, to be working, to have our health and to have a safe avenue to help others during these trying times.
For people who are critically conscious, the devastating health and economic consequences of COVID-19 push to the forefront the uncomfortable truths we already know: we live in an inequitable society where race and class most likely dictate future outcomes and the American dream is the same veneer as the cave shadows that keep Plato’s prisoners from moving.
Yet, for the first time, the literal connections between us bare witness that we are all actually in this together. No matter how rich, powerful and privileged you are, you can’t buy your own air (at least not yet). And probably, more importantly, connectivity—the kinship, fellowship, relationship— between us all is what actually defines us as human.
So that’s why we’re having a wedding. So Jared’s friend stationed overseas who missed the birth of his child to my 12th graders without a senior year can live out our humanity together in the way our nature intended: connected. Even if connecting safely means virtually or wedding legally means commitment ceremony with our marriage license app on hold, no one has asked us why Zoom, why Saturday, or why the rush because they already know: better to be together than not.
Here’s hoping that fleeting examples like a virtual wedding to permanent images of front-line doctors and nurses, truck drivers, migrant farmworkers, grocery store employees to first responders continuing to work on all of our behalf despite the danger to themselves and their families, remind us in the years to come we are connected, we are together and we owe one another an equitable opportunity for all.
And if you’re in need of a virtual dance party from home on Saturday night, we would love your company: tinyurl.com/smosca. Cheers!