Mimo has been if not stroppy, at least her old assertive self this week. Gone
the fear of coyotes and the compliant bedding in when evening falls.
“There’s no point you trying to lure me in with chips. I’m not as hungry as I
used to be.”
“You get all of everything. Sated is how I’d describe you.”
“Always room for something new. What do you have?”
“Gluten-free challah. J made it.”
“I noticed she’s visiting. Why’s that?”
“Her sister, the original god, is getting married.”
“Can you eat that?”
“Can you eat what?”
“Can you eat whatever she’s getting?”
When we weren’t busy with preparations and arrangements my thoughts were on
what to say, at the wedding, as father of the bride. Here’s what I settled on.
You must imagine the opening line delivered as Peter Cook in “The Princess
Bride.”
(Snip)
Marriage is what brings us together.
I haven’t got much of a speech. I’m a slow writer and they’ve only
been engaged a few years.
So now: elephants. I love elephants. The kids used to make fun of me
because when they wanted to go the zoo I’d say, “Great. I want to smell the
elephants.” I like the smell of pigs too.
Anyway, Hannibal took them to war, which inspired Tolkien and you’ve
all seen Lord of the Rings. But the elephants I have in mind are the
elephants who would be in the room…if we weren’t in a field. Memories.
Today we’re creating new memories but we can’t ignore the fact that we
already have a whole bunch, including ones associated with this day and date
and, in my case, yesterday’s day and date. On 9/11 a lot of people died. On
9/10 my father died. So let’s acknowledge the sadness and then the thing to
do is to raise a glass not only to those people but to all the people who for
one reason or another could not be here. It’s a traditional toast where I’m
from, “To absent friends.”
Now it’s my pleasure to thank everyone who is present.
When think about it, really the only thing a father needs to say in a
wedding speech is how great his kid is—E. is really, really great, the apple
of my eye (cider reference)— and how great is the person the kid has chosen
to marry—N. is really, really great, the er… pear of my eye, there we go,
done, I can sit down.
Except you haven’t really had a money’s worth, so I’ll add three
footnotes. Academics love footnotes.
You can be the pear of someone’s eye. I looked it up. Apple of my eye
refers to the pupil, the middle bit, and in the original biblical language—as
with Eve and Adam and all that—it’s not clear that the fruit in question was
an apple.
They’re sticking with their own last names. This means that E. will remain aIn the car
Little Richard—that’s what the book says about the origin of our name—bound
to show up in my dance moves later, and N. will remain a walrus. Morse is
French for Walrus. He was teased about this in school in France but I
checked. He doesn’t mind me mentioning this just as long as I also mention
it’s a fine Flemish name with links to the great engineers who build the
Alhambra in Spain. Those guys. The Moors. And from the fourteenth century
one, it’s an English name with, of course, lots of famous Morses, including
the detective on television who drives the lovely Jaguar. Now Nick owns a
Porsche I assume he’s going to pass the family Jaguar to me.
3) I’d like to offer a second toast. Imagine a photo of young N. He is out
in nature somewhere, crouched over a log or something, looking intently at a
bug. He wants to know how the bug works, why it moves this way and not that,
whether it is alive and how it is alive. And now, a photo of E. at about
the same age, dressed in a Superman suit, with really cool sunglasses on,
beaming because she has within her all the power in the world and is ready to
share it. And now we come to a third photo, one many of you have seen, of
the two of them all grown up and very much in love. I call this photo
“kindness,” because E. did her part, agreed to go on a backpacking trip she
didn’t think she’d like, and then N. at the end of the trip, is carrying her
pack for the last wee bit. In addition to his. It’s a wonderful photograph
because they’re both beaming, Bugman and Superperson walking together on a
beach, happy as clams.
Actually I think they were about to eat clams and I really have no idea
how happy clams usually are.
The evolution through those three images is something truly worth
celebrating, truly worth a toast. Two people growing up and now growing
together, complementing one another not just with words but with deeds and
skills. So if you would now charge your glasses and be upstanding.
My father gave a speech at my wedding. His father did the same before
him. Thus there now stands a ghostly line, stretching back towards the dawn
of time, fathers giving speeches a whole lot better than this one, and at the
finish everyone making exactly the gesture we now make, glasses held high in
the air and saying together, to the bride and groom, “Long life and
happiness.”
David Ritchie
