LAKE GENEVA, Wis. — Some dad was joking about the cost of raising a daughter the other day, putting the tab at between $700 billion and $1.6 trillion.
Obviously, no two daughters cost the same. Some are point guards, some are doctors, some are matzo-ball makers. I suspect that artists, including chefs, are the cheapest to raise. Except emotionally, of course.
“Art is the stored honey of the human soul,” Theodore Dreiser once noted. So are daughters — stored honey, gathered on “wings of misery and travail,” to finish Dreiser’s thought.
Sent another daughter off into the vast universe of adulthood the other evening. Not my daughter; actually my sister’s daughter. KD has a cover girl smile and a sailor’s elan. What a brilliant bride.
You know, we are born with our smirks, our quirks, our colossal unsightly feet. We’re pretty much what we are at birth, till we bring a spouse into our lives. Then we are what they are too.
Doesn’t that explain the human condition? Doesn’t it justify Shakespeare and John Milton and Etta James?
Indeed, we are guided by our restless hearts. And, starting about the sixth grade, we are obsessed with coupling up.
The guy KD chose for this occasion has a steel jaw and a sardonic outlook. Jeb is a Bears fan through and through, and prefers lake houses to vast oceans.
Obviously, he seems to check most of the boxes. Where does he stand on Craig Counsell’s handling of the Cubbie bullpen? We’ll get to that eventually, probably over cigars and icy double gins.
I remember when Jeb and KD were first dating. They came out to California for a camping tour, borrowing my tent, bags and stove. KD told me, “Uncle Chris, I really like this guy. Give me the good stuff.”
So I did.
The wedding was profound to me, as most weddings are. As I sit in the fourth row, I don’t ponder the wedding prep so much as all that leads up to it. How the bride’s parents met. How they established long-term credit, qualified for a house, managed to make the monthly payments, pay the OBGYN, raise six kids while covering braces and travel ball, keeping the kitchen somewhat clean, making a million meals, changing a billion beds.
All that led to this moment, this mitzvah, this dazzling movie-worthy bride.
I mean, this day doesn’t just happen.
Raising a son or a daughter means long nights and flu seasons and lost soccer socks. It’s two jiggers of agony, plus three jiggers of joy.
Hey kids, you think adulting sucks? Try parenting for a week. One week!
Somehow, my sister Holly and her husband, John, raised six of them quite well, and we celebrate tonight at a barn outside Lake Geneva, the Lake Tahoe of the Middle West.
The wedding barn, embraced by corn fields, looks like a towering cake. Just look at the glorious way they lighted it.
Before the ceremony, the air hums a little, as always. My theory: It’s all the missing loved ones fluttering back to Earth to watch. But I have no evidence of this. Just a hypothesis crossed with a vibe.
My role is small. I’m just an uncle with an old Pedro Arrupe poem in his pocket, which I’ll read during the ceremony. It’s about love – a topic I don’t even pretend to understand.
“What you are in love with, what seizes your imagination, will affect everything. It will decide what will get you out of bed in the morning, what you do with your evenings, how you spend your weekends, what you read, whom you know…”
See, told you love was complicated.
I love the trappings – the pass-around trays, the open bars, the champagne toasts. But what I really admire about weddings is what they say about family, love, fealty, compassion and our ceaseless belief in good outcomes. Weddings are giant funnel clouds of human faith.
I’m just glad to be here again, the last wedding of the season, to hear the father of the bride give his splendid toast and Christa her funny and moving maid-of-honor tribute.
Jeesh, why does this stuff still get to me so much?
I think it’s because I’m missing my meds, lost in luggage on the way to Chicago. One moment, my carry-on is on the LAX shuttle, the next someone has swiped it, mistaking it for his own bag. Easy mistake.
Nothing much in it: wedding clothes, some meds, Suze’s jewelry, my comic books, all the stuff required for a jazzy weekend away.
But we plow through, don’t we? And look what happens when we do.
Need a bit of fellowship? Join me at the Rose Bowl Quarterbacks Club on Monday, Sept. 15, for a breakfast session on toughness, perseverance and college football. Special guest: Hall-of-Famer Ronnie Lott. To register, visit the website by CLICKING HERE.
How I love this; weddings, daughters and Lake Geneva. You are pro with words! Thank you!
You’d have loved this wedding, Mindy, full of Barrington girls and boys, in that beautiful barn. The sunset sat on the horizon for hours.
Chris you never cease to amaze me – with your words and your ability to always turn lemons into lemonade. Losing your bag with your wedding clothes, Suze’s jewelry and your meds is enough to do anyone in! Not you! And then this…”It’s all the missing loved ones fluttering back to Earth to watch.” Everyone you touch with your words and your gift of love is fortunate to have you in their lives. We are lucky to come along for the ride. Thank you!
What a lovely note. I’m just the stenographer. With a wedding like that it’s hard to miss. By the way, props for getting a “ditto” from Caroll, who is the champ of beautifully rendered responses.
Ditto everything Lisa said so perfectly.
“Just a hypothesis crossed with a vibe.” Jeesh, can I steal that?
Done well IS well done, wordsmith. Kudos!
-RFR
Your words – “My theory: It’s all the missing loved ones fluttering back to Earth to watch. But I have no evidence of this. Just a hypothesis crossed with a vibe.” My heart skips a beat… feeling the same at a grandson’s baptism.
The beauty and mysteries of faith.
The tears flowed this morning when I read, “It’s all the missing loved ones fluttering back to Earth to watch.” That explains the “hum” I heard in 2014 when my son got married, and in 2018 when I remarried on the same day as my parents (1946) and maternal grandparents (1909). It all makes sense. Oh, and I, too, love Caroll’s beautifully written responses each week!
Always felt a certain snap in the air. Just occurred to me what it might be. Cheers!
You encapsulate the human spirit, joys, stages, and hardship beautifully in one masterful column. It may be weddings, but you have outdone yourself this time, Chris. And to leave the lost bag and belongins to the very end–it obviously did not diminish your joy and appreciation of the meaningful family occasion.
Wasn’t sure how to get into the lost bag issue. Turned out to be bigger than we first thought, but all’s well in the end. The bag wasn’t the thing, the wedding was the thing. Thanks for the kind words.
…“Weddings are giant funnel clouds of faith.” Yes. Sunsplit storms of hope. And, it seems to me, just more of Life’s Longing For Itself. There is almost a spiritual consciousness in its instinctual thrusts…and as for Love, that amorphous lubricant of the soul: who understands a river when you are floating downstream in it? So you are not alone in treading water on its fluid powers. Some just swim better in it than others. Others never wade into it. Still others drown in it, and so it goes in this lovely Summer now winding down, both of us apparently attending weddings on the same weekend. Weddings are the whipped cream on Life’s Longing For Itself that melts down into marriage, its cake sweet yet fermentative, its layers cemented by faith. Indeed, a mitzvah of longing. Etta James said it best, “At last”…and then…You ain’t seen nothin’ yet! More longing; realized. What better time for this than early on in September’s kaleidoscopic fulfillment of Summer’s cornucopia of yearnings?
always sublime. thank you chris. be well.
Weddings and brand new babies; these days, in any order. They have the power to sweep away the distractions of this unsettled world so we can focus all our attention on the people who mean the most to us. We got our chance to do that almost a month ago to the day, when our son married his wonderful partner and we heard him described through the beautiful words of her vows, and her father’s toast, and his best man’s speech. At the end of the night he said to us, “I want to be the person they’re describing.” I think he’s got a good shot to be, because, as you put it so perfectly, “We’re pretty much what we are at birth, till we bring a spouse into our lives. Then we are what they are too.” Thanks for another lovely piece, and for that glorious image cited by so many of your readers, the angels fluttering back. I felt them that night, too, as I turned with everyone else to see our soon to be daughter walking toward our son and caught, behind her, the framed photos of both sets of grandparents on either side of the wedding cake.
Lovely. Mazel, Steve and Susan