On the Road Again 2011 # 33

 In spite of it have been already a pretty exciting summer, the biggest event was yet to come. My son was getting married! And I got to be around for it all.

The three of us (my grandson, my son and I) went out shopping for clothes. It would not surprise anyone who knows him, but my son knew what he wanted and nothing less would do for his wedding clothes. It took us a couple of days but finally he put together his outfit and he looked great. (as did his bride and his son). Perhaps the best purchase was a pair of dress shoes that we found in a second hand store for $2.00. They were perhaps the buy of the year.

At some point in one of our shopping trips it struck me that it was the first time in perhaps a hundred years that there had been three generations of Woodall males in the same place. My paternal grandfather had died before I was born and my father had never known his grandfather either. It was an extraordinary realization and feeling. To be so connected to the past and to the future was, for a brief moment, almost so breath taking that I did not want to do anything except bask in the moment. The pleasure was almost paralyzing. The joy and yes the pride was almost palpable.  I truly felt blessed. But there was more to come.

I had been excited about the wedding for months - not just because they were finally getting hitched, but also because it meant that I would get to see my son and my daughter and all three of my grandchildren in the same room at the same time. There have been many times in the past ten years when I had just accepted that my children would always live in different parts of the country and that I would never get to see them together.  I could have (almost) quite happily gone home after I saw them all together. The fact that my brother and his wife were also there made it even more special. As my son said at one point , he had already got his wedding present from his family. I too got every present that I will ever need for the rest of my life on that day.

The wedding went without an obvious hitch, the weather was great, the bride beautiful, the ring bearer did get (eventually) up to the front to be with his parents, people got their pictures taken, there was piles of food, people had fun and all got home safely. What else could you ask for? There is far more to the wedding story than that, but it is not my story to tell. It is my son’s and my daughter-in-law’s story and hopefully one day, one of them will do their own blog about the happy day.

There is something to be said for low budget weddings. For both of my kids, we have decorated the halls ourselves. For the most recent wedding I even made some of the decorations. For both weddings helping out the day before meant that I got to hang out with my children’s in-laws. To get to know them and to learn about their family.  Everybody should do this way.

Thanks kids.