James Hayman:  This will be a short entry.  It will also be slightly off subject for the simple reason that for the past week or so I haven’t given a single thought to fictional heroes or villains or the dastardly deeds they do. Indeed the entire subject of writing and publishing mysteries and thrillers have been about the farthest thing from my mind.

Kate and Donald in Rome

What I have been thinking about is weddings.  More specifically my only daughter’s wedding.  Tomorrow my beautiful Kate will be marrying a delightful young man named Donald Edmondson.  It will be my first and hopefully only opportunity to play father of the bride, AKA the FOB.

Kate and Donald’s wedding will take place in a true Maine-like setting, a hundred-year-old wooden building called the Trefethen Evergreen Improvement Association (better known by its initials TEIA) on Peaks Island.

TEIA sits over the water on Peaks Island and in the late afternoon offers spectacular views across Casco Bay and the sun setting over the Portland skyline. If the weather gods cooperate, the bride and groom will get hitched in the corner of the wraparound porch with the sunset and the bay and dozens of sailboats gliding by just behind them.

As in most weddings, Kate and my wife Jeanne have handled most of the important stuff. As FOB I’ve been mostly relegated to show up where and when told and to handle logistics.  Like renting and driving a cargo van to pick up and deliver all the dishes and linens for the reception.  And renting a passenger van and hiring a driver to transport guests back and forth between the Peaks ferry landing and TEIA. For the past few months my most important has been to nod pleasantly in agreement when my wife and my daughter tell me what is going to take place.  And also to write checks.

Happily the checks haven’t been outrageously large as Kate and Donald are not planning a terribly formal wedding. Though Kate’s dress is white and very pretty it is in no way a traditional wedding gown. For his part, Donald will be wearing jeans and a blazer.  Both bride and groom will be wearing cowboy boots.  As for music Kate plans to walk down the aisle not to the traditional tones of “Here comes the Bride,” but rather to the livelier and in my mind totally appropriate lyrics (written back in thirties by a songwriter named Billy Hill) of That’s the Glory of Love:

You’ve got to give a little, take a little,
and let your poor heart break a little.
That’s the story of, that’s the glory of love.

You’ve got to laugh a little, cry a little,
until the clouds roll by a little.
That’s the story of, that’s the glory of love.

As long as there’s the two of us,
we’ve got the world and all it’s charms.
And when the world is through with us,
we’ve got each other’s arms.

You’ve got to win a little, lose a little,
yes, and always have the blues a little.
That’s the story of, that’s the glory of love.
That’s the story of, that’s the glory of love.

 As far as Jeanne and I are concerned, those lyrics do a pretty good job of summing up the forty years she and I have been together.  I could wish no more for Kate and Donald.