Autumn 2011 #10

I am the most fortunate of men!
Once more I stood at the altar as my daughter, transfigured in white, elegant, dazzling, walked down the aisle. 

A wedding!  Nothing in life speaks so profoundly.  Nothing embodies so completely the mysteries of promise, hope, destiny and choice.  I love weddings!  I love performing a wedding ceremony, as I have done from time to time; but nothing comes close to the extraordinary privilege of celebrating the marriage of your own child.  Four of our six children are now married, and I have taken part in each of their weddings.  It is, without shred of a doubt, one of my life’s highest points; an indescribable honour.  The first intimacy of parenting is innate.  It’s nappies and homework and hard work.  Then there is the intimacy of the shared journey through years of joys and tears.  And later comes this joyful intimacy of invitation, of being welcomed into our children’s adult worlds. 

Paradise feels empty now; a quiet Sunday evening with just my Favourite Wife and Little One at home.  It’s hard to believe that just hours ago the walls were bulging with our children, their spouses, our grandchildren, and even some bridesmaids jostling for a bed in which to sleep or a mirror in which to preen.  So much noise, so much fun. 

Family. The wondrously imperfect agglomeration of souls. I gaze on the most familiar faces in the world, I listen to intonation and turn of phrase that are so well known that I feel I could write the script; and still I wonder: how did we end up together? Related we are, and yet so stunningly, delightfully different!  For me and mine this is especially true, as we are a family of adoption and blending, or, as we like to say, a family by choice.

The wedding day was not, it must be said, without a hitch.  There were glitches aplenty truth be told!  But it was magnificent, and each challenge, each drama, was embraced with calm good-humour. Laughter won the day. We did it!  My daughter, my son-in-law, my wife, my whole family … we did it!  And I am one proud Dad!

Tonight I feel lonesome, as the sun’s last beam rapidly crests our hills.  But there are more good days for us, as there have always been.  What is a family?  It is certainly more than any one of us, much more even than the sum of us all.  A family is history, embrace, destiny and hope. A family is love, and love is choice, and I feel chosen.

Rejoice!