“Having discovered one another, they find themselves with all they could need.”
S and B’s invitation says it best and says it all.
That said, there is always something more to say about such a joyous occasion.
We, friends and family, know we are all witness to a magical event and marriage.
When S asked me to speak at her wedding, I was, of course, delighted and honoured to do so. I learned that I would follow B’s brother, C, and S’s father, W.
As family, who have known their half of the couple for something like 50 years, they would be best at telling us about these two people we are celebrating with today.
W, I thought, given his years in the English Department, might choose a poem or a literary text to read, or indeed C, and so, to avoid any possible duplication, I settled instead on the language of numbers, and in this context, lucky numbers, to express the magic and the joy of today.
Indeed, the numbers involved are both lucky, and what the numbers people among us will know as “master numbers.”
My choice to focus on the magic and profundity of numbers is not merely eccentric, but is lent authority by a figure as august as St.Augustine, who claimed:
“Numbers are the Universal language offered to humans as confirmation of the truth.”
Closer to our time, singer Mary Chapin Carpenter claimed in her song “I Feel Lucky”:
“Hey, the stars might lie, but the numbers never do.”
So on to those signifiers of truth.
I have known S 22 years — with its significant double digit — and A 11 years — with its double digit again – having met her in Vancouver not long after her birth in Toronto, and I have known B 12 days, a number both heavy with meanings and whose two digits add up to 3, the important number for a successful marriage when the two people come together to make a third identity of “we.”
I met S in 1988
A in 1999
And B in 2010
All numbers with a ring to them
We are here with them on 7/ 8/ 2010.
The time is so right – a perfect 10 in 2010.
It was a perfect 10 the evening we met B.
The night was warm. S, B, A, John and I sat in our urban patio sipping wine and elderflower water with an almost full moon for light.
We laughed, we told stories, swapped ideas and opinions, we ate and we drank.
In the time from 9 p.m. to just before midnight we had consumed a good lucky number of bottles of wine.
I had known S to be a good mother but on that evening, as I saw the exchanges of respect and affection pass between A and B, I saw then that B would become with S a good and caring parent to her, as he is to K and S, and that he would also be an enthusiastic and most admiring partner to S.
Another number — the last — comes out of my marriage of 28 years to my husband, John, continuing, as they say in the language of resumes, a number, whose two digits add up to a Perfect 10, I hope symbolizing for S and B at least that many years and many more of happy marriage lie ahead.
To S and B and your joined families:
May the wind be behind your backs, the stars brilliant above your heads and all your numbers winners.
Please join me in raising a glass to S and B, the families they were born into, the families they have made and the family they will now become.
©S Fuller 2010