Unexpected

My daughter got married last month. I've always told my children that the most important decision they'll ever make is whom they choose to marry. She chose well. But marriage is a choice too. I didn't expect this. Any of it.

I didn't expect my daughter would wear her mother's wedding dress. I didn't expect my daughter would ask me to read Mary Oliver's "Wild Geese." I didn't expect those vows, with hints of tender history and romance and humour. I didn't expect my wife's uncle to whisper this to me just before I went to the podium to speak, "Don't. Fuck. This. Up." I didn't expect to laugh so much, and cry, and laugh again. Or that they would sing that song, carefree and full-throated at times because that's what musicians do I guess. I didn't expect them to swing each other around in a circle during the first dance. As my sister-in-law remarked through joyful tears and laughter, "Who does that except L & P?" I didn't expect people from all over Canada, even the world. I didn't expect people to tell me how much our daughter means to them. I didn't even expect the father-daughter dance. I didn't expect to be the last one to leave the dance hall. I didn't expect that even though I've been a Dad for a long time, it will always be new, again.

I didn't expect to feel this content. Isn't it a wonder that we are always surprised by love? Forgive me: even though I've been parenting for 25 years, I've never done this before. And I'm grateful.

Things one should never outgrow:

new toys, even ones that don't yet exist.

I discovered this new word: reverb. I love this word. Defined, reverb is to cause to rebound or echo. Now here's the part I love. You probably already know this but apparently there are a variety of machines that allow musicians to manipulate acoustic sounds and patterns to make digital echoes. They instantly create their own reverb orchestra. It's like what KT Tunstall does with her famous song. Watch her feet:

I want this machine. But not for music. For life.

Imagine the words, and phrases and conversations one could save, return to and play with. Splice together. Be surrounded by. I want a way to reverb and revisit the music of my life. My missed life. My unrecorded life. My lost memories.

Maybe someone singing to herself in the other room. Maybe guitar riffs from another. Maybe Christmas morning kids. Maybe a soft loving whisper. Maybe what turned out to be the last phone call. And especially this: my Dad's voice again.

She said I could share.

      My daughter has been singing since she could talk. Her singing has a remarkable effect on me. There's that line from Othello, "O, she will sing the savageness out of a bear." I believe music, and all artforms, makes us suddenly more sweetly alive, suddenly separated from the day's ordinary-ness, the day's difficulties. Life just slips away. And it's doubly, doubly so when listening to someone you love sing, sing, sing....

Sometimes when she sings....

"Take these broken wings and learn to fly. All your life, you were only waiting for this moment to arise."

At the Music Monday celebration at her high school tonight, my 16 year old daughter sang Beatles' classics Blackbird & Yesterday. Her dress was a tad too short. But in all honesty, sometimes when she sings, it's like the sunrise.