Wednesday, December 30 – The Day After\/ The Reception<\/p>\n
I am fascinated with typos.\u00a0\u00a0Many\u00a0accidental spelling errors make\u00a0a point,\u00a0though differently than the writer intended, that fits equally well or better.\u00a0 I’ve considered writing a story with a character who doesn’t correct the typos he makes.\u00a0 While writing the title of this article, I accidentally typed Fride instead of Bride.\u00a0 At this point, the father is definitely beginning to feel a little fried.\u00a0 Last night’s hour and a half drive home around midnight exhilarated me at the time, but the weight of it is now dangling from my neck, a joyful though real bit of wedding lead.<\/p>\n
Today’s the reception.\u00a0 I think my own bride and I are breathing a little sigh of exhausted relief to be back on familiar territory.\u00a0 We’ve been serving groups large and small from the first weeks after our own wedding in July, 1981 until now.\u00a0 What we\u00a0had become\u00a0pretty good at after all those years, we honed even more while living overseas where entertaining and being entertained were part of our work.\u00a0 We are planning two receptions, one today and one on April 17 in Indianapolis for relatives and friends who can’t make it here.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
Food shopping calms me.\u00a0 It’s a balm.\u00a0 I love setting out, list in hand, to the stores I know well, whose aisles guide me to what I’m looking for, a plane touching the landing strip again and again, aimed exactly at\u00a0 what I want and need.\u00a0 Today is a little different because I am buying a spiral ham at a specialty store and high quality cheeses and breads somewhere else that sells a wide variety of top quality cheese.\u00a0 We want to make the reception just right.<\/p>\n
I met our sons and their women at that store.\u00a0 They ate lunch while I shopped, though afterwards our middle son helped me select cheese and wine.\u00a0 I’m glad for his palate and his knowledge of wines.\u00a0 Later in the afternoon he rides with me as I dash to a few other stores.\u00a0 We pick up the beautiful, thick, rich chocolate cake (at this point of the week, I’ve earned a luscious wedge of chocolaty goodness), a few things at a different grocery, and his pair of boots from the shoe repair shop.\u00a0 The used vintage boots, a Christmas gift from his girlfriend, are well-made of high-quality leather, and needed only a few repairs.\u00a0 While dashing from place to place, he gave me a little lecture about what my daughter calls go-mode.\u00a0 That’s the fast and furious pace I get in when I’m wanting to get a lot done, though in retrospect it’s also what I get in when I’m anxious, worried, or feeling tied for time.\u00a0 I don’t love my son’s lectures though I love his love for me and the confidence in himself they’re born of.\u00a0 All he wants is for me to stay healthy and alive a good long time.\u00a0 I’d like that too.<\/p>\n
I’m glad for my children and their significant others.\u00a0 Especially glad when I arrived home and found my current and hopefully future daughters-in-law cutting vegetables, helping set things up, supporting my wife who was fairly calm about the impending reception.\u00a0 Her big, or at least pet, project for the event was setting out luminaries, brown paper bags with sand and a candle in the bottom of each.\u00a0 She likes luminaries because they are a simple, inexpensive way to decorate outside the house.\u00a0 The walk was lined with these glowing wonders, looking more wondrous as the sun set.\u00a0 I love them because they’re little icons of us:\u00a0 commonly wrappered bits of clay with an inexplicable glow that comes as a surprise.\u00a0 Our candle: God’s image.\u00a0 We have this treasure in earthen vessels, indeed.<\/p>\n
The wedding wasn’t exactly traditional.\u00a0 Only eleven people witnessed it, all standing in a 300 year old house George Washington might recognize were he still with us.\u00a0\u00a0 That little room had a fireplace, but no pews, a minister but no altar, attendants but no wedding party.\u00a0 Would this reception, also not traditional, held a day after the event in our apartment, work?\u00a0 Would it feel right?\u00a0 Would it satisfy my daughter’s desire for a “real” wedding event?\u00a0 In retrospect, I think it did.\u00a0 Our tables overflowed with a grand ham, cheeses, breads, vegetables, wines, spirits and more.\u00a0 Guests, food, a cake with a bride and groom (from her grandparents’ and parents’ wedding cakes), and presents all conspired together to make it real.\u00a0 We had puzzled the traditional pieces (minus dancing but no one seemed to mind) together.\u00a0 It all worked.<\/p>\n
Relative and friend walked the luminary path to our door to celebrate this grand event.\u00a0 Guests basked in the bride and groom’s glow.\u00a0 Their presence, their taking time and trouble to greet the young couple, most meeting the new husband for the first time, and bring good wishes and gifts and stories and talk and laughter, lighted the evening and us in it,\u00a0transforming mundane victuals and chat to something almost transcendent.\u00a0 I am grateful for these people and this magic moment.<\/p>\n
From the Bride’s Father’s Notebook<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Wednesday, December 30 – The Day After\/ The Reception I am fascinated with typos.\u00a0\u00a0Many\u00a0accidental spelling errors make\u00a0a point,\u00a0though differently than the writer intended, that fits equally well or better.\u00a0 I’ve considered writing a story with a character who doesn’t correct … Continue reading