I thought while I was talking about the women in my family, I'd repost something I wrote about my daughter when she got married last year. This is taken from my science fiction planckscaleblog in June of 2010:
My daughter Elise (aka Sugar) was married last Saturday. As father of the bride I searched for days wondering what I could say about her to the gathering but when I saw her standing in that dress it took me by surprise and words failed me.
I've gone to lots of weddings over the years and seen so many versions of gorgeous young woman in a special white gown built just for them. So many in fact, that their standout beauty became part of the uniformity of the occasion, even if the bride was someone close. Tuxedos, flowers, round table full of relative unknowns, white dress, vows, etc. all blended into one large garden party.
But the girl in the gown on Saturday shone out at me like a beacon of light, like all the trappings, including the tux I was strapped into, were all part of the invisible dark matter (well, this is an SF blog!) and she was the only particle of light in the whole universe. My! It took my breath away. It wasn't that she was the most beautiful girl in the world (that's a given), it was more: she and she alone turned the mundaneries of weddings into an event that I was privileged to be part of. I couldn't take my eyes or mind off her, seeing so radiant, thinking about her future and past, watching her live the night she'd dreamed of since she was old enough to dream. This wasn't a wedding - it was THE wedding, even more calamitous than my own.
To bring this special relationship that I'm sure many parents feel at their children's weddings, into a perspective that somewhat befits this blog, and follows what I've been saying the past few entries. The universe we see is only visible with the eyes that were evolved to survive in it. Maybe the truly beautiful, rare, and unusual can only be seen when our relationship with it is special.
I've gone to lots of weddings over the years and seen so many versions of gorgeous young woman in a special white gown built just for them. So many in fact, that their standout beauty became part of the uniformity of the occasion, even if the bride was someone close. Tuxedos, flowers, round table full of relative unknowns, white dress, vows, etc. all blended into one large garden party.
But the girl in the gown on Saturday shone out at me like a beacon of light, like all the trappings, including the tux I was strapped into, were all part of the invisible dark matter (well, this is an SF blog!) and she was the only particle of light in the whole universe. My! It took my breath away. It wasn't that she was the most beautiful girl in the world (that's a given), it was more: she and she alone turned the mundaneries of weddings into an event that I was privileged to be part of. I couldn't take my eyes or mind off her, seeing so radiant, thinking about her future and past, watching her live the night she'd dreamed of since she was old enough to dream. This wasn't a wedding - it was THE wedding, even more calamitous than my own.
To bring this special relationship that I'm sure many parents feel at their children's weddings, into a perspective that somewhat befits this blog, and follows what I've been saying the past few entries. The universe we see is only visible with the eyes that were evolved to survive in it. Maybe the truly beautiful, rare, and unusual can only be seen when our relationship with it is special.