For as long as we both shall live

Kindergarten Friend might be my oldest friend, but that won’t stop me from exposing her darkest secret on my blog. I’ve already mentioned her obsession with the Little House on the Prairie books. She and I once spent days creating a Little House on the Prairie board game, complete with a deck of cards that had a picture of a covered wagon drawn in magic marker on the back of every single card. She and I did some crazy things when we were little: we’d tape yarn on light switches, for instance, to create the predecessor to the remote control. It was her idea that we should knit a scarf between us, each of us working on one end of it, while simultaneously roller skating down the street, the scarf stretching between us as we moved.

I suspected, when I saw her pull out her knitting, that she wasn't making a sweater. That would have been too ordinary. And I was right. About an hour into my visit, while Kindergarten Friend and I were still catching up on gossip from our respective families, her daughter bounced over with a swish of her blonde ponytail and presented me with a craft box with a smile that said, “You aren’t going to believe how crazy my Mom is.” When I opened the box, I saw evidence of a truly depraved soul.

Kindergarten Friend has been knitting the Royal Wedding.

Yes, it’s true. As I pulled out the knitted figures, I recognized them right away: William in his uniform, Kate with her lovely veil, the mischievous Harry, the beautiful Pippa.

“I’m still working on the archbishop,” Kindergarten Friend said, “He's missing his head.”

If she’d been someone I just met, I might have tried to be polite, but she’s known me for 45 years. There was really no point in hiding my reaction. I laughed and laughed and laughed. Then I grabbed the figures and said, “I NEED to take a photo for my blog! My readers are not going to believe this!”

I set the propped the figures up on a pillow. The light was okay, but we needed something more. “Wasn’t there a red carpet?” I asked. “And trees? Right? Trees in Westminister Abbey!” I pulled off my red fleece: it made a fine red carpet.

Kindergarten Friend produced the special royal edition of People magazine, and we consulted the photographs eagerly. I began scouring the room for props. The soap dish from the bathroom looked like a marble step. The checkerboard from the kids’ box of games looked like the black-and-white tiled floor inside the abbey.

“Let me pin their hands together,” Kindergarten Friend said. “That will look more romantic.” She fussed with the little figures while I kept bringing her more props. Blonde Ponytail got into the act and made steps by folding up a piece of cardboard. The most brilliant touch was a hand-decorated Christmas ornament that I found in the kitchen: we dangled that above the royal couple like a lovely chandelier.

After about thirty minutes, we had a pile of random items gathered on the floor. The hardest part was trying to make pillars. We tried a broom handle, a paper towel dispenser, a ceramic soap dispenser. Nothing was just right. We briefly considered moving the whole photo shoot into the bathroom, where the tiled floor looked quite church-like.

In the midst of this, I noticed that the Kindergarten Friend’s niece, a bright young woman about to go into her senior year of high school, was giving us an incredulous look. She looked at us both, then looked over to her grandmother. Kindergarten Friend’s Mom just shrugged and went back to her knitting. Kindergarten Friend’s husband shrugged and went out on the deck to grill burgers for lunch.

“Don’t worry,” Kindergarten Friend reassured her niece, “We’ve always been like this.” Then she turned back to the tableau. “How about if we tape a piece of fabric to the wall?”

We had to hurry because her husband had lunch almost ready, but still, we felt pleased with the results. You have only to check the many online photos of the royal wedding to see that our details were exact. Well, we had to eliminate the archbishop because of that whole missing head problem, and Kindergarten Friend gave the Prince more hair than he really has, but otherwise, I think we quite captured the regal flavour of the occasion. And it was a perfectly lovely way to spend a rainy afternoon.