Friday, November 12, 2010

Father of the bride

When my daughter was married in the mid 80's I gave a toast at the reception. The reception was in our home at Lotus City and the house was "chockablock" with family of the bride and groom, and many friends! It was a joyous occasion! I had not prepared a toast since it was only at the last moment I was informed to do so! I quickly searched my memory and came up with the idea to describe the day he asked for her hand. Our house was shaped like a tomahawk and a series of bedrooms down a long hall, the handle of the tomahawk. They were visiting from Olympic City at the time he asked to marry her. I described the scene to the assembly as follows." My present son-in-law came up to me out of the blue some time ago, and said, ' I'd like to speak to you about something.' It didn't take much intuition to know what was coming! ' Sure,' I said. I looked up the long hallway as we talking and could see my daughter peeking out of a bedroom door and then pulling back quickly when spied. It was a telling, classical, scene. He said, ' I would like to get your permission to marry your daughter.' I was actually, at the time, surprised to be asked! I said, ' Do you love her?' 'O yes,' he said,' I really love her, she is such a happy joyful person to be with.' He spoke with such vehemence! I paused, to fully take in this response. I then said to him, ' We would be glad for you and her!' " That was the gist of the matter. So far so good. Then, I added a tail to the tale. I told the reception guests my thought, during the pause after his confession of love. I said, "I thought at the time, holy shit, he really does love her! " My friend Janet said, later in the reception, "Do you know you said shit ?" I didn't know. My Toronto sister-in -law, standing with us, said, "Of course he said shit!" She understood. It can be a word of passion, in a moment of glory.

1 comment:

  1. Shucks,
    Spoken like many a father-in-law but in this being allowed to express in public without ones precious spouse praying to all the Gods possible , he keeps it short and polite.
    To protect myself from the wrath of my OH for the moment, I wrote a letter to my father-in-law in Barbados to ask for his precious daughters (Liz)hand. What I discovered when I got their a week prior was that my letter was read to the WHOLE family as my writing was like a person writing a prescription.

    I'm glad to have found your blog, wonderful thoughts for me to muse over during my now retired years. I started up a crusie blog last April 2010 and tropical butterfly tells me I only have virtual friends not real ones.
    Cheers /Rob

    ReplyDelete