why I cry now at weddings.

Last weekend we attended a wedding.

Both Bearer of the Ring and Tosser of the Flowers bore the Keigley namesake.

It’s funny how age changes everything.

(I do mean everything.  Shape.  Proportions.  Patience.  Tolerance.  Ability to run fast.)

But age does change other things too – like perspective.

And perspective shifts and morphs and shapes you.

I used to spend the wedding time watching the bride and the groom.

Now I find myself looking to the mothers.

Mother of the bride.

Mother of the groom.

I cannot help myself.

It’s whom I am identifying with these days.  I watch the sibling snapshots.

I see the tears build up in the edges of the mommas’ eyes

and it makes my chest hurt a little.

I know I’ll be there – Lord willing and long life granting –

and I breathe in sharp and deep at the thought.

I don’t want to give any of them away.

“Who gives this woman to be wed?”

“Her mother and I do.”

No – no, we don’t.

I want to selfishly keep them all forever – my babies and my ones.

I want to stay as the center – the gravity that pulls them around and dictates their path.

And instantly – of course – as the very words leave my brain and travel to my fingertips I know how deeply wrong this is.

How ultimately not right and not natural and not desirable my sentiments truly are.

And yet.

I cannot deny that I feel them.

I cannot deny the burden they place on my emotions.

And so when you see my eyes watering a bit at the next wedding I attend, you can know that it’s not the union that is moving me to tears – it’s the separation.