Stereo

“We’re not doing that.”  The bride gets what the bride wants, and that includes what she doesn’t want.  It’s the rehearsal, and the wedding helper has Amanda and me practice the processional.  It’s all I can do to not burst into tears and its only the rehearsal, for goodness sake.  We walk down the aisle, we hit our mark and I hug her, because she’s my Sweetpea.  The helper (Amanda’s the real planner at this wedding) suggests I put her hand in Andy’s, as a symbolic handoff.  Amanda’s having none of it.  “We’re not doing that”, she says in her customary cheery voice.  She’s my Sweetpea, but more importantly, she’s an intelligent, fully capable woman, not at all interested in inequality or patriarchy.

We leave that part of tradition to the Middle Ages and Andy and I just go with a handshake instead.

If you drew a Venn diagram of me crying and Ames, Iowa, you’d have a nearly perfect circle.  Initially surprised she chose Iowa State, the first time I visited Ames was during Amanda’s orientation.  Colin’s baseball team slipped out of sole possession of first place that Spring as they lost two games while I lost my daughter to time marching on.  We walked around a very beautiful campus and I found myself trailing behind her, letting her lead the way.  I’d hang back as we turned corners of buildings, and compose myself with a deep sigh.    

When I got back to Davenport that last season of being Colin’s skipper, regaining the helm on the ball bucket, Chris asked how the college orientation went.  First things first, Chris.  How the hell did you lose two games?  Then, I told him I spent two days just a half second away from melting into a pool of tears.

I tell the ball bucket story to good effect during the welcoming toast at the reception, leaving out the part about losing two games.  This is a celebration, after all, and I’m not going to cry over lost games or a lost daughter.  I so declare during the toast itself, as a trick to keep myself on track and intelligible.  It works, but just barely.  Fathers of the brides, I learn, have zero ironic detachment.

If you get anywhere close to thinking of the whole span of it, you’re doomed.  Which was made all the more difficult with my own October bride in the room, as beautiful as ever.  How improbable, all this is.    

“It’s a girl.”  Even while recognizing the roughly even odds, I was nowhere near prepared to hear that.  I can conjure the moment exactly.  A girl?  A look out the window to a world that suddenly seemed so December-cold and so full of threats, so full of boys without a clue, so full of men who couldn’t possibly measure up.  The deepest breath of my life, and into full love and fierce protection mode I went.

It’s not a knob.  It’s not a button that toggles on and off.  It’s a switch that locks fully on.  The light of my days on this mortal plane, goes the one sentence summary.  Never a moment of trouble.  Innumerable moments of joy.  Why is the laptop screen looking like a rain-streaked window?

The friends and now co-joined family all collected together, there was nothing but love and joy, even while the bride danced to “Go Cubs Go” while the groom somehow had to go to the restroom just at the moment the Cubs beat the Nationals.  There were old friends telling new stories in the same way you remembered them.  There were groomsmen being goofy, and bridesmaids being lovely.  Did we, could we ever have looked that young and goofy / lovely, once?  There were old people, young again in the midst of matrimony.       

There was a Sweetpea, who walked up the aisle smiling, with her impossibly lucky father.  There’s now a Mrs. Fogerty, who walked down the aisle with her groom, beaming.

In between, there were vows, and readings, and literal and metaphoric knot-tying.  Because the bride gets what she wants - there was no patriarchy.  But there was a father of the bride and groom handshake, and the most serious four words I’ve ever spoken.

Take care of her.