A Special Request From My Only Child
At our Thanksgiving table last year, my son, Garret, and his fiancée, Priscilla, gave me a book on officiating weddings. It was their way of asking me to perform their March wedding ceremony. Although they delivered a speech with their request, I don’t really remember the words because I was lost in imagining how to say “no.”
A few years ago, I didn’t think Garret would ever get married. He was in his thirties and had been dating for close to two decades without meeting someone he could spend his life with.
He asked me how I would feel if marriage and a family weren’t in his cards.
My mom-heart contracted, but I managed to say what I knew he needed to hear: that I wanted him to be happy and admired his conviction not to settle for less than his soulmate.
Six months later, Priscilla and Garret met and seamlessly slid into one another’s lives.
I adored her, couldn’t have picked a better other half for my son. Why, then, did I want to hide under the turkey platter when they asked me to officiate? I could tell by their faces that they had not expected my reaction. Not only was I disappointing them, but the energy at our holiday table shifted. I played with my side dishes. Somewhere between re-mashing my potatoes and picking the pecans off my Brussel sprouts, I figured it out.
I knew I could write their story. But speak it out loud in front of all the guests?
Without a doubt, I could make their ceremony heartfelt and personal in writing, tell their fairytale as a mother and a writer, the way no one else could. What I didn’t want to do was read it aloud.
By pumpkin pie, Priscilla, Garret, and I agreed that I would compose the script for the ceremony, and they would consider a backup officiant to read it aloud.
With the pressure off, I got to work. I asked Garret and Priscilla questions about the tone they wanted to set, the degree of formality, and what personal tidbits they wanted to share.
I couldn’t wait to start writing.
Of course, this is when everything changed. I owned the emotion behind every sentence and phrase. I could “hear” where I wanted the inflections and pauses.
I would have to be the one who performed the ceremony.
I overcame my reluctance by practicing every day. I often thought about workshops. In my tenure with the Philadelphia Writers Workshop, I must have read my work aloud three hundred times—and lived! My confidence grew.
Two weeks ago, I did it. I married Priscilla and Garret on a sparkling Saturday afternoon in Santa Barbara.
Was I perfect? Of course not. But just like in the workshops, every comment I received was praise; listeners took away what was “good and strong.” Isn’t that exactly what we always come back to when we comment on work read aloud?
Everything we create as writers and artists is a piece of ourselves. Sometimes it’s our whole heart, and sometimes we garner courage from unexpected sources to share it with the world. When I began writing with the Philadelphia Writers’ Workshop, I never expected the confidence I gained from reading aloud to take root in my personal life. Without the self-assuredness I gained as a writer and leader of the workshops, I would have missed out on the joy of participating fully in the beginning of Garret and Priscilla’s life together.
by Danettte Laver
Danette is currently leading a Write With Danette via Zoom workshop
